


so meet me in the shadows.

by vasnormandy



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Multi, ho ho HOLY SHIT, im a mess!! i love percy!!! this isnt just because both villains are named delilah!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-18 15:45:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10620048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vasnormandy/pseuds/vasnormandy
Summary: we run and hide until the evening ships sail - when the night is black, only then do we exhale.  ||  the dishonored 2 / critical role au that no one asked for.





	1. when the sea was still peaceful

**Author's Note:**

> title & description taken from "the sands of serkonos." chapter titles will be taken from various songs within the dishonored setting.  
> im love the de rolos?? so much? anyway im dying hope u enjoy

yesterday was a day like every other. today is not.

the buttoned-up shape of the littlest sister has found its place in the grandiose marble throne of whitestone. they take turns, all of them, who has to sit in that seat on this day of the year as the horrors of the honorifics proceed, who has to spin a speech and stand beneath the banner bearing the faces of their parents. cassandra was exempt from the order, initially, and ludwig as well, too young, too new. percy took his turn the second year, and again two years ago. last year was whitney. this year before a decision could be made her little frame pushed itself in, that prim face fifteen years younger than the eyes it houses. it is the eighth year. she is sixteen years old. she has spent, now, precisely half her life with the steady embrace of a father and the stern smile of a mother and the other half without.

 _it seems appropriate,_ she said.

_it seems time._

standing to the side of the throne as cassandra sits it feels both awkward and fitting, somehow both in equal measure, somehow both at the same time. percy has always hated the chair, everything it signifies, though he cannot say he's happy to see her take up the burden - too heavy for her small shoulders. nonetheless it is his hands which gently place the silver circlet atop her head, pale fingers to nestle it into rich brown curls.

cassandra reaches up, tugs uncomfortably at a bit of her hair, now pressed between the cold of the metal and the warmth of her forehead. before she can voice a complaint, if she were going to, percy reaches to hook a finger through at the base of the curl and pull it free, settling it so it drapes over a portion of the crown. "there." his hands go back to the sides of her skull, to delicately touch and adjust the balance. this was made for mother's head. it fits the curve of cassandra's far better than it does vesper's. "you look beautiful."

"forget beautiful, percy." she fidgets, and he understands why - it's nearly impossible to find a comfortable way to sit in that wretched construct. _we really must see about better cushions,_ he says to julius, every time he has to take a turn in its clutches. cassandra looks up at percy - brown eyes, both, near identical. the framing of hers lacks only the bronze-rimmed glasses, and bears marginally smaller and lighter hollows beneath. "do i look respectable?"

"exceptionally so."

they narrow, those old brown eyes. "you're not just saying that."

"you're statuesque, little sister." he bends, kisses her temple. "and i haven't been able to lie to you since you were four."

"three."

it's a half-hearted correction, but it brings a hint of a smile. the white of his teeth glints past his lips. "i'm very proud of you, you know."

she squirms in the seat again. "you don't need to be a sap about it," she mumbles, and he smiles, smooths her hair one final time, and leaves her to settle into her position.

it's become a habit in these years, so deeply ingrained in him that he hardly notices it any longer. seeing two parents bleed out before your eyes will do that to a boy. he strides the length of the grand hall, all laid out for receiving guests, all decked in finery commemorating the lives and deaths of the lord and lady of whitestone, empress and emperor of the isles of tal'dorei; he idly fingers the ornate hilt of his rapier as he walks, half-hidden under the swoop of his coat. he doesn't like the weapon nearly as much as his sisters do, it's clumsy and he doesn't like to be so close to those who mean him harm, much prefers little instruments of violence of his own invention, but vesper handles security, and vesper insists, and vesper gets what vesper wants. and of course vesper has no interest in his tinkering, has not asked for lesson after lesson on how to handle the cruel devices, does not gape in awe every time a training dummy in the yard explodes into fluff and torn fabric at nothing but a twitch of her finger fifty feet away. _julius, vesper, oliver_ \- it's become a habit, as he patrols - not everyone is present in the room, so half with eyes and half with memory, he inventories his family.

it was difficult, those first few years without mother and father. the violent transition, the disease that had swept through the city, various scheming interests who sought to puppet the de rolo children to their own ends. it was agreed nearly immediately among the three oldest (the two oldest, really, with percival unceremoniously dragged into agreement) that regardless of who the law called emperor, the heir apparent should not assume the throne alone, but that the burden of rule be shared among what remained of their clan. split the load. it didn't make it easy. julius (eldest, in sight, across the hall near the throne, his brown hair braided down his back, inspecting the memorial plaque) thought he would be ready when the time came. he wasn't. vesper (second, not in sight but just outside, he knows, drilling the guards on safety procedures) couldn't imagine she was up to the task of filling the vast shoes of both of their parents. she was. whitney and oliver (younger than him, right on percy's heels as he rushed into adolescence on the day their parents died - in the kitchens, he remembers, whitney helping, oliver waiting) would not leave the castle for months, would not leave each other's side for longer. still nearly inseparable. still on a cusp, bearing less responsibility than their elder siblings held, carrying more memories of when their family was whole than their younger siblings ever will. ludwig (second-youngest, in his room, percy thought, but glancing back he sees him now at the arm of cassandra's throne, speaking; she reaches up to tuck his hair behind his ear) was barely ten, and still cries on every anniversary, still hates that the day is marked for celebration. and god, god, cassandra, youngest, centerpiece, sixteen.

percy has long since stopped questioning how the justice of the world works, and how any balanced cosmos could allow this. he has long since stopped seeking answers in the strictures. he has accepted unfairness. still, it twinges in his stomach, only when he sees cassandra; it pulls at his guts. this is not fair.

he's long since stopped.

oh - a cough, short, firm, and a glimpse of red. vesper. she is standing with her perfect posture and her lifted chin when he turns to face her, her crimson coat buttoned up to her throat. such a sharp contrast to the gentle hues of whitestone, percy always thinks, the deep blues and dull golds he wears, the lavenders which julius prefers, the silvery-blue which cassandra is draped in today. but vesper always was the autumn color among their winters, the only de rolo whose brown hair tints auburn in the sunlight, the only de rolo with a single freckle to be counted on her peach-pale face. after all these years she is still an inch taller than him.

the conversation begins nonverbally. he cocks an eyebrow - a question. she sets her shoulders - an answer, and takes his hand, and presses something into it. percy receives it, lifts it to the light.

"the signet ring?" the oddity brings words to his mouth. "i thought you were holding onto this today."

"it won't fit underneath my gloves." to demonstrate, she presents her hands, clad in stitched brown leather as they are. "it's cold out. won't fit over them, either. father had larger hands than i, but not that large."

"your gloves?" it's as though the entirety of her thought has not registered - percy's mind, as always, is still on the trinket, its intricacies, the beautiful raised crest of the de rolo family, the branching tree, the curiosity.

"yes," she replies, with an air of tense repetition. "it's cold out."

"mm. unseasonably so." as quickly as he raised the ring, he retracts it, smoothly rolls it from its seat between his index and thumb to the well of his palm to clasp it in his fist. "you can't just put it in your pocket?"

it's a simple enough request, he thought, nothing unreasonable, but it earns him a groan and a roll of the eyes, his elder sister's trademark. "just wear the damn ring, percival, we ought to flaunt it anyways. mother's pendant is rather lost within cassandra's ample bosom."

"i'd... rather not think about cassandra's ample bosom, thank you."

"you know what i mean. it's not displayed." vesper touches where the dip between her own breasts would be, were her uniform coat not stretched taut across her chest, and she's right - father wore his crest on a ring, mother hanging from a silver chain. while their heraldry was easily presented atop the fabric of the tighter, high-necked affair whitney donned last year, cassandra has chosen a different style, and the pendant insists on disappearing beneath the neckline of her bodice.

there's a small sigh which he stifles, with some success. "fine, fine." father wore this on his pinky. percy's hands are rather slimmer, and it fits best on his ring finger. "are you happy now?"

she gives a shrug. "getting warmer."

he'll take what he can get. he clears his throat, inquires as he fiddles with the signet ring, tries to seat it more comfortably atop the knot of his knuckle. "how's security? tight as always?"

vesper nods. "no assassins sneaking in this year. cassandra? uptight as always?"

percy nearly manages a laugh. "nervous, i think, though she wouldn't admit it. don't spread that theory around."

"my lips are sealed." sometimes, he recalls, with melancholy, when vesper smiles, her face morphs into mother's. she folds her arms in front of her chest. "i'm going to check in with jules. you know how he gets."

"oh, i do."

"especially now. what with the murders." he winces; she scuffs her shoe against the wooden floorboards. "they've taken aim at you now, you know. the papers."

"had they?" he questions, and hopes he sounds disinterested enough. "i thought they were still intent on slandering you."

"i'm not nearly out of the woods, don't you worry." smiling through it, as she always has, her teeth a white glint between thin lips. percy almost winces - vesper has always carried the sadness in her stomach much more bravely than he has. she must notice, because her expression softens. "really. don't worry. we're close, i'm sure of it. they'll be lining up to apologize before you can say crown killer."

"of course they will." the messages scrawled in their rivals' blood, political enemies dead in their homes. he's never sure whether to be terrified of this figure of mystery, dressing up crime scenes to pin responsibility on him and his siblings, or to breathe relief that the people who might attempt the same kind of backstabbing scheming that colored their lives eight years ago are dropping like flies in summer.

vesper sets her shoulders back, stands straighter. "julius."

"right. of course."

"then i'll be outside as the guests trickle in. you know the drill." she pauses, and then takes an arm away from her center, reaches to lay the tips of three fingers against his elbow. this is the casual physicality which has grown between them since it happened, intimacy by touch, a stranger thing in his youth. still cold by southern standards, perhaps, but what isn't? "are you ready?"

"am i ever?"

"are any of us?" there's a wry smile that she offers now.

"you, if anyone."

"true enough." her fingers are removed, her hand returned to where it had sat previously on the ridge of her own hip as her forearms cross over her core. "keep an eye on cass. take over if you have to."

he lets a tinge of annoyance bleed in. she's only two years his senior. "i know, vesper."

"i know you know." her strides are confident and strong across the floor to julian. out of all of them she was always most comfortable in stiff boots and armor, with a sword strapped to her back, the best in a training ring. father's favorite, whitney used to whisper, like it was the best gossip from town. she was probably right. he's only sure it wasn't him, with his books and his tinkering, his wild ideas that kept him wrapped up in his workshop through every formal event he ever promised he'd attend. loved, yes, he knows that, but not admired, never the vessel of parental pride. not that it matters now. not that it ever did.

the ceremony begins. percy finds his way to take his place beside his sister, beside cassandra as she sits the throne. he can see julius and ludwig as they each leave the room by their respective channels, julius out the grand doors towards vesper, ludwig back down the hall towards his own chambers. he can see professor anders as he moves into the hall, in step with captain ramsey in his uniform of the guard. their faces are solemn. anders casts a glance at percy, and says something to ramsay, and goes back the way he entered. percy, for his part, barely notices that the hall has begun to fill with nobles until cassandra rises to her feet, clears her throat, begins to speak.

"my friends, people of whitestone," is where she begins, and he can feel a small swell in his chest. "these are dark times, but today we honor my mother, empress johanna de rolo, and my father, emperor frederick de rolo. may their memory survive through the ages."

keeping it brief. he can respect that. she settles back into the throne, lets out a long breath like something deflating. captain ramsey has moved to stand at her other side, and he waits for her to inhale again before he leans in. his voice is soft, but you can hear him murmuring to her, an announcement - before they begin in the day's observances, an unexpected visitor, the duke - the duke of serkonos?

it's no sooner than he's said this that the doors of the hall slam open and the man himself steps into view. percy has to press his lips to curdle the distaste in his mouth. he's never liked the man, brusque and impolite, all posture and no substance. something to be endured. kerrion stonefell marches down the carpet, followed by a hoisted carriage, flanked by - oh.

now his interest is piqued.

they're glorious, gorgeous. works of art in all their bronze plating, the spin of their gears, the rotation that governs their step. some part of his mind registers wariness, a healthy distrust of the bladed appendages that form the arms, but the rest of him is engrossed fascination. men of clockwork, standing eight feet high. "incredible," he mumbles to cassandra, but a glance in her direction reveals none of the same admiration in her features.

the duke has begun rattling on, professing this and that, something about condolences, and gifts so the capital does not forget the rising star that is serkonos. percy couldn't care less, but for a newly spawned hope - gifts in the form of the mechanical soldiers? he should be so lucky. his hand twitches at his side, itches to take his tinker's tools to these things, deconstruct them and discover every part.

cassandra's voice rings clear through his thoughts. "we welcome the duke of serkonos," she acknowledges, perfectly regal, "and thank him deeply."

"save your thanks," stonefell replies gruffly, "for now i give you the greatest gift of all: family." he continues, but for the space of a few seconds the details of his words are lost as that one, that one, rattles through percy's mind. family. family? it's become a habit - he runs through them quickly, counts them, checks the inventory. julius, outside. vesper, outside. oliver, downstairs. whitney, downstairs. ludwig, upstairs. cassandra, at his side. six, all six, no more to speak of. what family?

the answer comes immediately, in luca's sickening tones. _delilah de rolo._

delilah de rolo?

the murmurs in the room match the murmurs in his mind. "mother had a sister?" cassandra whispers to him, in confusion and alarm, and percy has no response to give her as the woman in question steps down from the carriage.

she is a dark figure, deep brown hair wrapped up atop her deathly pale head. there is a beauty to her, certainly, of a sinister sort, and if you look closely you can almost see a resemblance. but there is more of mother in vesper's paradoxically warm and freckled skin, in vesper's traitorously reddened hair, than here in this professed sibling. she is too cold, too sharp, too bound up in the corset and the rise of her collar and the great black swell of her skirt that swishes as she approaches the throne. not one guard moves to stop her.

"my dearest niece," she begins, a sweet simper, all her attention on cassandra. "what a beautiful thing you've grown into."

"i don't understand," cassandra says, a venture.

a smile from delilah. "of course not. my father was emperor julius de rolo, and johanna was my younger sister. at the time of your mother and father's horrible demise, i wasn't ready to make myself known to you, and i was forced to leave whitestone. but now i'm home."

percy can feel the uncertainty, the caution. it practically radiates from cassandra. he can't say he blames her, and subtly he sees her hand move to the arm of the throne, nearer to him. he cannot bend to hold it, but he places a hand on her shoulder and she steels herself, rises in her seat slightly with the lift of her chin and the straightness of her back. "if you really are our mother's sister," she begins, "you're welcome to stay as long as you like."

that pulls a worrying smile from delilah, and all the eagerness in percy from the appearance of the clockwork marvels disappears, sinks away into unease and dread and a horrible, horrible sense of recognition. "little sparrow," she croons, "blackened by bad memories. i'm here to relieve you of your crown. the proper lineage of whitestone is now restored."

"watch your tongue." he had not planned to speak, but well, then. here we are. percy takes his hand from cassandra's shoulder to step forward, place himself between her and this woman. "johanna and frederick were the rightful rulers of tal'dorei, and as their children -"

"percival, isn't it?" her expression is sickening, and she saunters closer, raises a hand to caress his cheek - he slaps it away, but the gesture only seems to encourage the dark enjoyment spread across her face. "how naive to think you and your siblings could get away with these murders," she simpers. "living in my palace has protected you. but that's over now." she turns, spreads her arms to her sides, addresses the room - "hear me, all of you - your rightful empress has returned!"

"all hail the empress delilah," stonefell cries out from the carpet, "first of her name!"

percy waits for a response, for their soldiers, for their walls to protect them as they are meant to. none comes. before his eyes, these men, these men who vesper oversaw, these men he trusted, stand at attention and raise their swords and their eyes and their hearts to this woman. this stranger who has ascended cassandra's dais. stonefell draws his sword and stands ready, and so too do the guards, in unison - he points to percy with the blade, declares, "arrest the de rolo children for the crown killer murders!"

that's enough for him. his eyes meet his sister's for a fraction of a moment, and the understanding is instant: they act as one, his blade pulled from its sheath, her body a blur as she rises swiftly from the throne. then her back is to his, both of them turning in unison; the sword rips through the stomach of the guard nearest to him, but she is unarmed, she is unarmored - "cassandra," he whispers, and finds her hand behind him, and presses the rapier into it. she's better with that thing anyway.

delilah does not seem alarmed. there is a dreadful smirk on her lips as she descends again towards stonefell, and percy barely has time to register this before the back of ramsay's armored hand strikes him across the jaw.

 _traitor._ he falls, tumbles down the steps from the dais, and as he catches himself on the floor he sees cassandra - deflecting the blows of one guard, two, and then she lunges for delilah.

she doesn't make it close enough to reach her. percy has just begun to recover, pushing himself up, as delilah's awful white hand extends and gestures and stone manifests from nothing, locks itself around cassandra's feet and begins to climb. "i cast you in cold marble," she hisses, and steps closer, and the expression of terror that presses itself into cassandra's face is the last thing to move before the stone swallows her and she is there, as a statue, her rapier clattered to the ground, her hand still raised.

percy thinks his sister's name tears itself from his mouth, but he isn't sure. all he is sure of is that he is throwing himself, all body, no weapon, towards delilah, and then ramsay is knocking him to the ground again and she is lowering herself, crouching over his prone form.

"percival," she chides, shakes her head, and his name in her voice feels like a poison. "don't be foolish, nephew. over time you'll come to love me." her gloved hand caresses his cheek, backs of her fingers brushed over the curve of his face, and he barely has the space to flinch away. he can see duke stonefell's face swimming above him, blurred by rage. delilah smiles, adds,  "perhaps someday you'll see me as the mother you lost. but until then, you'll be kept out of trouble."

"i'll lock lord percival in his chambers," comes ramsey's voice, as delilah stands, and snaps - "then i'll bring him to coleridge prison until his trial," and something solid and blunt meets the side of his head with skull-cracking force, and the last thing he sees is the professor in the doorway he had left through - anders, his expression neutral, his arms folded over his chest.

 


	2. we cower in the alleys of the streets where we did stroll

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im glad i'm seeing some response to this! i know i'm really writing to a niche audience here by crossing two relatively small and completely unrelated fan bases, but i'm having a lot of fun writing this.

he is engulfed in pulsing blackness. it draws in and recedes like water, the tide that crests the whaling boats, the water lock. he comes to only briefly, only just, only in small increments. just moments. he is floating just above his body as his head smacks against the stone floor.

he is aware of large hands around his legs, dragging him. his coat has bunched up around his torso. the doorway from the grand hall to mother's favorite parlor passes over his head.

he is aware of pain as his head falls, again and again, against each step he's pulled up - thump, thump. darkness covers him again. silence follows.

it's broken, the hard quiet, by a voice that it takes his disoriented mind a moment to place. mother? _ramsay, what's_ \- no. not mother. vesper. his vision comes back slowly, blinking, and from his horizontal state he can see her looming above, a tower of red. concern is written into her face. " - going on?" she has continued. "i heard shouting," and then her eyes land on him and flash with fear, and her voice raises an octave as she exclaims, just his name, "percy!"

it's good she didn't try for all of _percival._ she'd never have reached the third syllable - barely makes it to the second before there is a blade through her gut, a tear in her red jacket, a red, red tip protruding from her back. knifed up to the hilt, straight through. he knows that hilt. those twisting bits of metal wreathed his fingers not minutes ago (was it minutes?) and then cassandra's, a finely crafted rapier for a de rolo child. vesper wears its brother on her hip, for what little good it does her now. her hand has stretched, her fingers arced and tensed - a bit of darkness seems to weave between them, no doubt his hazy imagination, his disjointed mind. the shadow moves like snakes, searches for purchase, and dissipates. ramsay twists the sword, elicits a weak and gurgled gasp from her mouth, and then he pulls it free in one swift, violent tug, and she crumples like an empty garment. percy has no voice with which to scream. darkness comes again.

he is aware, next, of ramsay's abhorrent face too close to his own, ramsay's abhorrent form crouched over his body, ramsay's abhorrent fingers roughly gripping his hand, wrenching free his father's ring. the bastard holds it over percy's face, knows he's too far gone to make a grab. "there's a rumor in the guard," he says. "the de rolo children's secret safe room, housing enough gold to buy an island. and they say this - " he tosses it in the air, father's ring, the signet ring, the crest, his family heraldry - and catches it. " - is one of the only two keys." he has to watch him pocket it, and rise, and then consciousness is gone again.

  
\---

  
the light through his windows bears a horrible orange tint when he comes to again. the sun curves into a downward arc. he is on the carpeted floor of his own office with a terrible ache in his center. he clambers to his feet as quickly as his body will allow him.

vesper. cassandra.

the door, of course, is locked. the windows are not. percy is much quicker with his hands than he is on his feet, more deftness than balance, but he is desperate and afraid and necessity is the mother of many things beyond invention, and he is able to inch his way along the ledge. the cliffs far below call out to him. he slides carefully through the window of his bedchambers.

not only is his bedroom door unlocked, it is ajar. almost laughably easy, and part of him, the sardonic core of his heart, offers a biting remark, thinks he ought to be concerned - having trusted their safety for so long to a guard captain whose idea of security is so half-cocked and shoddy. the matter at hand, of course, is that they've trusted their safety for so long to a man who just led a usurper into their halls. threw his lot in with an arcane stranger who sealed one sister in stone. put a sword through another.

he is at the door, through the door, the second his feet touch the ground, no regard for silence or stealth. vesper is not in a heap on the floor, so that's a good sign right away. she has pulled herself upright against the wall. blood is pooling around her, soaking into the floorboards and that'll never come out, and the redness has not shifted the color of her coat one tone, and her chest is - her chest is heaving, not still, shaken by gasping breaths. yes. thank god. in the space of a heartbeat he has gone to the ground beside her.

"percy." her voice is a breath, a hacking cough. "what's -"

"there's a coup underway." he's nearly impressed by the steadiness of his own voice. he half expected it to crack and wither like it hasn't since he was fourteen.

"cass?"

"she's -" what is she? terror grips his heart again. "being held."

"who -" she dissolves again into rasped, broken coughs, can't speak again for a decent fifteen seconds. "percy, how could this -"

"i don't know." he finds her hand, the one which is not pressed over her wound, clasps tight. "we've been betrayed. i don't know by how many, but i'm going back to find out."

"no." it's a sudden surge, insistent, and her hand turns to hold his. her skin is slick with blood, her fingers slipping in their attempts to find purchase. "no, percy, you have to go. you have to get out."

"ves -"

"there was a ship captain. i got the message earlier." she's managed to grip, wound her wet fingers into a deathly tight hold on him, all her strength. "down at the dock. looking for us. something important. go. get out of whitestone. not safe."

"i - can't."

"julius was outside with the guard." it's lower now, her voice, just a strained whisper. "ramsay hand-picked those men." her meaning sinks in, his eyes locked with hers, and percy's heart sinks. "he's gone. held, maybe, like cass, but if he's not -"

he doesn't think he can breathe. "don't say it."

"you know what that means."

"no. ves, you're here, julius could be -"

she interrupts with a rattling exhale, and lets go of his hand, and brings both her shaking arms up to lay a reddened palm against each of his cheeks, to hold his face. "you're emperor, percy. by all laws. you have to go."

he'd shake his head if it were not locked in her dying strength. "please. please don't."

"the safe room," she replies. "the secret exit. duke stonefell. serkonos. follow the trail." her hands release his face, and go down to unbutton her coat, and she sweeps it aside to show something at her belt, affixed to her hip. he recognizes the shape, the one he'd let her practice with, first one he'd ever made. he reaches, slowly withdraws it from its shoddy holster - smooth silver, six barrels. he is too drawn in to see her movement, only feels the wet cool press of her hands when they cover his, affix his grip on the pepperbox. "go," she whispers.

he swallows through the swelling in his throat. "i'll come back," he gets out, soft, roughshod, after a long few moments. "i'll come back for all of them," but when he raises his eyes to her face to seek a response, he finds nothing. her head lolls to the side, vacant eyes half shut. her hands are limp as they slip from his.

he gently shuts her eyes. it's all that he can do.

he cannot risk a trip down to his workshop to gather his more recent projects. the pepperbox will have to do, and whatever tools and bits he has left scattered through the de rolo safe room. but before any of that, before whatever will come next, there is work to be done.

the safe room is hidden in the shelves of julius's room. his brother is not imprisoned there. percy conceals himself, waits, watches ramsay approach the shelf and fiddle with the signet ring and figure out the lock, watches as the bookshelf slides aside to reveal the dim-lit passage. he watches as ramsay enters and he enters silently behind, follows him down the steps. he has picked up a small pillow from julius's bed. he doesn't think his brother will mind. as he approaches he presses it carefully against the muzzle.

the back of ramsay's head explodes in a grand shower of red shrapnel. his scheming mind is scattered across the floor. percy can feel his heartbeat as it catches, intensifies without speeding. this will be the first of many. he retrieves his ring and shuts the door behind him.

  
\---

  
it is a simple enough business, descending across the rooftops from the height of whitestone castle to the lowlands of the docks, without being seen or heard. percy has never lived anywhere else. this city is laid out before him like his own body. he knows its secrets.

there are only a few ships docked, and only one the branding of which percy does not recognize. it is anchored a ways off of the boardwalk. he considers his garb, for a moment, whether the weight of his coat and the tinkering tools he has lined its pockets with will drag him down, wonders if he cares, and then dives into the cold water. he's a strong enough swimmer, remains under the surface as much as he can until he is well out of the immediate sight of the guards on patrol. they will kill him on sight, he's sure. if they're still alive, they're ramsay's. they're delilah's. they're dead men lucky enough not to know it yet. he makes the trip, finds a handhold on the boat's side, pulls himself up. if the woman standing at the helm was not expecting a sopping sovereign to drag himself from the ocean onto her deck, it doesn't show on her face.

she is tall, or perhaps only seems that way because he has yet to stand up. her skin is dark, her hair a tangled rat's nest crafted by sea winds. the sun has begun to pull the deep brown color from the ends. a scar crests over her eye. she regards him, one foot set just slightly ahead of the other.

"which one are you?" is all she asks.

he coughs, spits a bit of discolored salt water out onto the deck, begins to get to his feet. his coat is twice the weight he's used to, bogged down with the sea. his short brown hair is plastered to his skull. "percival."

she gives a hum. "i'd hoped for the older sister."

"believe me," he says, "you aren't alone in that." a hand goes up to push his stringing sea-soaked hair back. "she's dead."

it feels untrue. vesper always seemed immortal to him - to all of them, he thinks. they were confined to the tower for a while after the assassinations, held under the thumb of the scheming interests which sought to control the empire. they dealt with julius, mostly, as they spun their lies and feigned concern for ten-year-old ludwig, abducted by the assassins they had hired. percy was just fifteen, spent the blunt of his time tinkering and reassuring the twins and cassandra. it was vesper, seventeen and brimming with the training she'd acquired from their most elite guards, who stole away from the tower by way of windowsills - darted across the rooftops, vesper who found allies hiding in the flooded district, vesper who stole ludwig away from his kidnappers, vesper who unraveled the first conspiracy and then the second as those who'd claimed loyalty to her revealed their true cards.

he never understood how she did it. it never mattered. she was vesper - vesper, assigning herself the duty of protecting all seven of them, and vesper, fulfilling it proudly. vesper who would outlive the empire.

the boat captain knows none of this. the boat captain nods, untouched by the gravity of loss. "and the rest?"

"i don't know."

"you'll do." she tips her hat, just slightly. "captain adella. this is the dreadful wale."

"right. right. percival frederickstein von - fuck." the breath he draws is long, shaking, up and down, and he holds it a moment before he exhales. isn't that supposed to help ward off the panic? "what do you want with us? was it to do with all of this?"

"it's not me," adella replies, and nods to an open door down to the cabin. "my passenger. paid a lot to get her here to see your family by the anniversary, then wouldn't leave to go up to find you."

"an ally of the de rolos?"

"there's noble implications there that i don't think apply." she shrugs her shoulders, sets her arms across her chest. in the gesture her hand passes over her midriff and for a moment her leather coat looks red, her skin pale and fingers slim and knotty, vesper bleeding out. he blinks the thought away. adella has continued speaking. he's missed some of it. "down in the hold," she's saying now, an end to a sentence he didn't hear the start of. "i'm sure she'd like to speak with you. if you're up for it."

is he up for it? no. surely not. he draws a breath. "time isn't a resource i find i have in excess nowadays."

adella gives a nod, and gestures to the door again. "go ahead."

an alien fear stalls him - what will he learn down those steps? what does he want to hear? what could have been prevented, had de rolo feet found their way down to the docks a few small hours earlier? he moves forward mechanically, no more mindful of his steps than those clockwork men who carried his siblings' deaths into their halls.

percy has been on a boat before. this one is rather dingier, rather dirtier, corridors not freshly swept. it's spacious enough, and he does not need to duck his head to enter the spaces below. it feels lived in, lived in by more than one, but no one occupies the first hall he glances down, or the second, or the large room beneath the bulk of the deck. he sees, indeed, no signs of present life at all until he peers into what looks to be a storeroom.

there is a figure far within, sat atop stacked crates. a hatch for unloading cargo has been opened, and her shape is perched at the edge of it, her legs hanging outside the boat proper. he can see the bare toes of her silhouette, her hands by her mouth as she chews at her nails, the rippling red-handed evidence of nervousness. in the sun her skin gleams like dusted bronze. her hair is a tight-locked mass of burnt red waves falling all down her back. her pants are rolled up just past her knees, her tucked-in shirt a billowing formless piece of off-white linen.

percy clears his throat, and she jumps with such ferocity that for a moment he is concerned that she will topple out the open hatch and into the ocean. she catches the edge of the opening, steadies herself - one shoeless foot has found its way up onto the top of the crates she sits atop, braced to stand, and then in a single instance the panic of a startled animal is replaced all at once by recognition, and then understanding, and then dread.

"oh, no," she begins, soft, and her hands - wreathed in bracelets like small vines - rise to cover her mouth. "oh, no."

"hello," he offers in reply.

"oh, no," she says, again, and so much for manners, then. "i'm so sorry." she brings her other foot back into the boat, stands up atop the crates, very nearly hits her head on the ceiling. "i'm so sorry. oh - has it already happened?"

percy only notices now the stiffness of his figure, the tensing of his body, the strained stability. the same sort of words which often come so easily to him now stick just beyond his throat, unformed, unthought as of yet. it takes concentration to assemble them, to think of what to say, and in that time the stranger has clambered down from the boxes to stand face-to-face with him, very nearly his equal in height, barely an inch shy. she is all length and no width, a willow of a woman, all subtle hard muscle making up her lean shape. and percy thought he was skinny.

"it has," she says, and saves him the effort of concocting a sentence of any substance. "i'd hoped - i thought maybe we could arrive before -"

he puts up a hand, stops her short. when in doubt, he supposes - when unable to collect a true and intelligent thought, when filled with the awful sickly syrup of helplessness, when too focused on containing the horror, keeping it from spilling forth, for anything else to find its way from your mouth - in the event of a decimated family, dead sisters, dead brothers, your ancestral home robbed and ravaged - when in doubt, one can return to the basics. the easiest thing will do. his raised hand lowers halfway, turns sideways, extends to shake. "percival fredrickstein von musel klossowski de rolo the third."

she clasps his hand with her limber fingers, only loosely, shakes quickly and then releases. "keyleth," she says. "you have to come with me, back to emon. there's a lot of things you need to know."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love keyleth and i would kill a man for comments.


	3. and lo! he still whispers in silence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hhhholy shit this was a fun one.

adella appears briefly to pull shut the cargo hatch, and then disappears back up the stairs. percy can feel the vessel rumble to life beneath and around him, the treading of water down below as the great scrap of steel pulls free from the harbor, begins its arc southward to serkonos, to the dukedom of treachery, to emon, its glistening capital.

keyleth clears him a space to sit among the crates. he is flanked on either side by ropes and nautical equipment, by thin vials holding a glistening blue solution. she climbs back atop her own crates and pulls her legs up tight to her chest. she asks, first, to hear what happened at the castle, whatever he feels he can bear to tell - and the words come easier than he expected. perhaps codifying it, like a history, makes it feel like something more detached. he has always had an easier time with facts and figures than the loose and indefinable twitching of the heart. keyleth listens with brown eyes wide, brown fingers drumming on her bare knees. when he has finished he cuts her off before she can offer her gushing sympathies, and she shuts her mouth, and thinks, and nods, and then begins her own story. it is a long tale, and she stammers her way through it, loops back over herself, restarts and rehashes her sentences. it takes some time for him to get the gist of it all.

she is a witch. she precedes and follows this confession with a plea that he not panic, not attack, and demonstrates her claim with a raised hand, a bit of greenery coiling up around her arm and amid her fingers. it does not seem eldritch and dark, like the magics percival has heard tell of by the abbey. it does not seem frightening. he leans forward in curiosity. she is a witch, and until very recently she was a witch in the employ of a sylas briarwood. she hesitates on his name, forces it out, and then watches him carefully as though expecting a response which does not come. the moniker means nothing to him. breathing deep, she continues. sylas, she says, led their coven, and led them in service of his lover. his lover, delilah.

it's that name which draws the reaction she'd anticipated. percy's hand finds his pepperbox, pulls it free, aims it, cocks it - there's no way she could know what it is, could know its purpose or its violence, but she quickly shrinks anyway, scuttles backwards across the boxes, raises her hands. maybe his body language is more than enough to name it a weapon. "stop - stop!" her voice lifts into a cry, but her volume is not raised - not nearly enough to call adella down, he realizes. she doesn't want to cry for help. "i didn't know," she breathes. "i didn't know. i promise you i didn't know. sylas took me in. he taught me. i barely knew delilah."

"but you knew her." he can't tell if it's an accusation.

"i'd seen her," keyleth admits. "not at first. at first she was - i don't know. he had a statue of her that i'd hear him speaking to sometimes. there was something, i don't know, he was - obsessed with fixing something, to do with her, and then - i don't know. i wasn't one of the ones he really trusted."

he still has not lowered the gun. he probably should. "and then?" he echoes, pressing.

"i don't know!" she shies back again. against the tops of the crates, her hands arch, her fingers curling inwards, nails scraping against the woods. he wonders, then, what she is capable of, what her magic means. could she defend herself? why doesn't she? "the last two years -" she swallows, vocalizes a few disjointed sounds before she's able to resume. "i'd see her around the coven every now and then. she spoke to me once, just - wanted to know if i'd ever been to addermire. i told her no."

"addermire?" he lowers his arm now, lets the pepperbox rest at his side, and he can see her relax, her tense hands going lax.

"the addermire institute. off the coast of emon. the hospital." she points to the elixirs housed in the little glass tubes, the sloshing blue liquid filling the open boxes. "i don't know. i'd never been, and sylas had never mentioned it. that was - right around the time the crown killer murders started, though."

oh. of course. of course that would be connected. of course that would be delilah's doing. what's happened to his mind this afternoon? he holsters the gun, lets his coat - still wet - fall over it. "is that right?"

keyleth nods. "i don't know if it's - but... maybe. i do know one thing. she never called herself delilah de rolo as long as i knew her."

"really?" percy rocks back in his makeshift seat, crosses his arms over his midriff.

she shakes her head. "delilah briarwood. just that. that's all anybody called her. i don't know if she is a de rolo, but -"

"she isn't." he's not sure where the hardened certainty that permeates his voice quite came from, but the second he's said it, it's there. his folded arms tense. he shakes his head, and a bit of seawater drips from his slick dark hair and hits the wood of the box beside him. "that woman is not of our blood."

"if she is -"

"then she's killed her own family," he interrupts. "whatever right she ever had to whitestone is - beyond forfeit now."

keyleth nods, hugs her legs tighter to her chest, and a chilling silence grips the room. all that reaches his ears is the gentle thrumming of water against the hull and the dull roar of his own blood. several long minutes pass before keyleth rises to her feet, to a full height much greater than percy had realized - she is his height, or taller by an inch or two. as she ducks to pass through the cargo hold's door, and waits for him to follow, it's difficult to tell, but once he stands beside her in the hallway, yes, he's sure. her eye level rests just a hair above his.

"it's going to take a day's travel or so to reach emon," she says. "i had captain adella ready some rooms for, um - for you. in case. i'll show you."

he lets keyleth lead him from the cramped hold, down the narrow hallways that wind through the body of the dreadful wale. her hair moves like candle flame with every step across the rocking ship, like something living in its own right. she passes a chamber with the door ajar, cracked open to reveal a swinging lantern, a bed unmade, greenery with no apparent source curling around the woodwork - she reaches, pulls the door closed, leads him to the end of the hall and pushes an identical door open.

"i'm sure it's not what you're used to," she says, the start of an apology which he does not let her finish.

"it's fine," he cuts off, short and blunt, before he's bothered to look within. the doorway is short enough that he, too, now has to lower his head to enter; the room is small, a mattress on a low bedframe and simple sheets, a slightly rusted sink against the back wall, a desk; a little shelf, or a cabinet, guarded by sliding glass. a trunk for clothes. a place to sleep, flat surfaces to work. more than he needs. "thank you, keyleth."

she nods. "you, um - let me know if there's anything you need. or the captain. probably the captain, she'd, uh - probably be more helpful. but if there's anything -"

"nothing. thank you."

she differs from him greatly, in class and origin and what she has lived, and in every way he can imagine, he thinks - but she recognizes a dismissal. she pauses, opens her mouth and shuts it again - swallows, presses her lips taut, wrings her hands anxiously in front of her. her nerves practically buzz around her head like insects. he offers half of a small smile, a dip of his head; he is still surprised by how alright he feels, how detached, considering it all. just numb, he supposes. that seems to be enough for her - she gives a wavering smile in response, and wordlessly heads back down the hall.

there are no windows. percy has no concept of what time it is, how late into the evening or the night, how long it has been since he awoke shut in his chambers - how long it has been since things were as they should be. long enough for his clothes to begin to dry. it hardly matters. he peels off his coat, throws it over the trunk. his holster follows, its payload still tucked within its thick leather; after a moment's consideration, he pulls the pepperbox free, opens the lid of the trunk cautiously. it holds only a few folded sailor's shirts, loose and plain. he nestles the gun within the fabric folds, places a few of the garments over top of it to conceal it, and shuts the trunk again.

his shirt comes next, still damp enough to cling to his skin - that, he drapes over the hook on the back of the door, in the hopes that it will dry in the salt-sticky air of the ship's hold. his boots are still sloshing when he kicks them off, pushes them into the corner underneath the sink. he keeps his pants on, pulls one of the soft shirts from the trunk and dons it and puts out the light in the lantern and climbs between the bed's stiff sheets.

he does not expect to sleep. he expects to lie still and feel his sword arm severed, the ragged space where the safety of an older sister was once attached to him, visage of vesper's death-slack jaw swimming in his head. the rocking of the ship, his small child's hands rocking ludwig's cradle, the first sibling whose infancy he was old enough to remember, rocking to lull into complacency - ludwig, dead or worse now. he does not have the vaguest hope of sleep. it washes over him nonetheless.

\---

the bedchamber is different when he wakes.

there is no way to light this room but for the lantern he doused, but the room does not seem to care - it is cast in a dull gray gleam, clear enough to make out the shape of every piece of furniture casting grand shadows across the floor. he pushes the sheets back, greets the cabin floor with the soles of his feet, rises - the light has no source he can find. he tries the door. it will not open.

he did not have a moment of disorientation upon waking, does not have to recall where he is and how he came to be here; whatever rest he has gotten has done nothing to scrub clean the memory of the past day's events. he does not need to stop to get his bearings. but he turns back - and all that being true, he's fairly sure that when he bedded down, the back wall of the cabin was indeed a wall, and not an open square of space, a rocky passage out into some great nothingness.

there's no question. no hesitation. his inquisitiveness has always been stronger than his common sense, his self-preservation, by a hundred times. he pads barefoot out onto the smooth, cold stone that stretches out before him, sheets of rock suspended in emptiness. he climbs.

he thinks he's heard tell of this place, now that he's delved within, ascending through the gray along the sheer, floating cliffs. he thinks this is what the abbey means when they talk about the void, when they warn of the occult magics, when they speak of atrocities to pelor. he thinks this is what they mean when they tell stories of the void and its sole dark denizen. is that who he feels watching him?

is this a dream? the cold cuts down to his bones.

the air around his feet seems to coagulate into wisps of dark smoke, which move and swirl without wind to push them. he cannot look away - they collect, condense, solidify, and the creature they form has the shape of a slim young man but his body is nearly obscured in the blackening mist, too dense and dark to peer within. the shadows around his head seem to take the shape of a hooked beak for only a moment, only a second, and then they disperse - and the man within the smoke wears a deep gray coat, watches him with eyes that are nothing but blackness.

 _emperor percival de rolo,_ he greets. his voice is layered, as though three of him are speaking at once, and at the same time feels no more than a whisper - percy nearly flinches. he hates the sound of that. the man crosses his arms over his body, leans in, says, _i'm a friend of your sister's from the bad old days._

he feels as though his voice has gone from him. he knows these stories. the outsider vanishes into smoke again, his body ripped to wisps, swarms across the rock and rearranges himself into human shape. _i never expected us to meet,_ he continues, as casual as a date for tea, seated on jagged stone. _i watched your mother and father die at the hands of schemers who wanted your little empire. your little brother stolen away, then rescued by a woman in a strange mask. i thought that was the end of the excitement._ he dissolves, again, and just one of his endless words reverberates, sister's, sister's. which sister?

he knows which sister.

 _but someone's yanked the rug out from under your feet._ the voice comes before the physical shape, and percy dodges to the side as the creature reforms just to his left, hands clasped behind his back, pacing forward. _a strange woman with her claws dug into your throne, your sister. i promise - delilah won't just give them back._

where are his words? his gallows wit? how can he be nothing but breath before this thing? a low, long wail fills the swampy sky - percy's eyes dart towards the sound to behold the great, looming figure of a drifting leviathan, a whale far beyond any size he could have imagined, a ripped and bloody thing with far too many eyes, far too many fins, far too many teeth. it swims lazily behind the small shape of the even greater leviathan as he turns, night-eyes fixed on percy. _so,_ he begins, with sly interest in his voice, vague apathy in his stance. _what are you prepared to do about it, your imperial majesty?_

sweet pelor. he'd disliked "lord percival" more than enough, but he'd gladly take that over this, thank you. he's no emperor. the outsider gives him no time to respond - he is very nearly smiling, the most disconcerting thing in this entire landscape. and he amends, _and - are you clever enough to do it without spilling a river of blood?_

 _i'm clever,_ percy would say, if his words would leave his throat. he can nearly feel the pepperbox's weight in his hand. it's never quite worked the way he wants it to, too unsteady, too clunky, too prone to error. _i'm clever enough,_ he thinks, and turns the barrel in his hand - a small alteration here, an added piece here - _a river of blood. i'm clever enough._

the dark smoke swirls around the man in shadow as he crosses his arms before his chest. _i asked vesper those same questions eight years ago,_ he says, and percy can feel the cold cut of the name slice to his core. _this,_ and he can almost feel the shadows, are they reaching out to grasp him, are they taking root - _is the moment that changed her. now it's your turn._

he knows not what bargain he is making. he does not know if this is true or false, a real step across planes or a figment of his breaking mind. can he feel, now, tendrils of smoke around his mind, pressing into his ears? the voice that resounds is dark, not the outsider's, not his own, just a rumbling echo. _vengeance._

was there ever any question?

he is not aware of the moment of agreement, the deal struck - there is the advance of the smoke, and then a sharp sensation of burning without pain that takes hold of his left hand, seeming to come from within his own skin. the mark etches itself, searing red and then gray and then black as the mist, framed in smoke, producing wisps of blackness like steam. he flexes his fingers, clenches his fist - "it burns," he manages, his voice returned to him, rough in his throat. "i see - a door," but when he raises his eyes the man only smiles and vanishes again.

he can still feel the weight of his gun in his right hand - when he glances down it is no imagination, no illusion. the pepperbox hangs at his side. it gleams for a moment with the same light that burned the outsider's mark into his hand. when he lifts it to inspect it, it bears markings it had not before.

he turns it, gingerly, gently. three barrels have new script across them, artfully emblazoned into the metal. _delilah briarwood. sylas briarwood. kerrion stonefell._ he turns - two barrels continue to gleam, just slightly, in an otherworldly way, as though lit by a fire that exists just outside the material plane. he turns - the sixth barrel, just below stonefell's name, loses its glow, the ember-sparks disappearing as another name sears itself into the steel. _professor anders._

four names clear. two more unknown. the gun is weighted differently, and he has no idea how he knows but he knows, he knows exactly what is changed, he knows exactly what he needs to change. he knows precisely how he can transform this rough design into the perfect instrument. _a river of blood,_ he said. the smoke swirls.

percy lowers his right hand, lifts his left, compelled by some certainty without source. the black mist collects around his fingers, seeps from his pores, closes within his fist. he extends his arm - and he shoots, watches it fly, a concentrated streak of smoke fired off like a bullet, reaching a point on the stone far beyond and he feels it latch and then tug and then he is there.

is this the witchcraft he's heard so many tales warn against? he's never felt such a vivid energy buzzing through his blood.

he tries again, pulls himself ever-further across the stony void. every story the overseers have ever told about the black magic of the outsider. every one of them true. a new story, now, with percival at the center, for better or worse. most likely the latter. the smoke swirls.

at last he pulls himself too far, and has no stone to land on, and plummets towards the nothing. he wakes in the hard bed provided for him in the cabin in the gently swaying ship. he has no clue as to the hour of the night - he bolts from the mattress, lights the lantern, unpacks his tools from the pockets of his coat and lays it all out on the desk. he works like a man possessed, his fingers two steps ahead of his mind. as the light of morning begins to seep in through the crack underneath the door, the glass of the cabinet above the desk throws back his reflection, his eyes framed by familiar hollows, his glasses, his hair all shock-white but for the roots.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whooo i'm having a fun time with this. figuring out how void magic would manifest uniquely for percy as one of the marked?? good shit. i toyed with a couple concepts for his movement ability - his version of corvo's blink or emily's far reach - but i like this one best. and though there wasn't much to work with in this particular scene bc percy's a little bit spent and whale man is hard to interrupt when he's monologing, i am positively tickled by the prospect of the dynamic between percy and the outsider. like. wow.


	4. before the great burning, before the war

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well yall i'm a wreck but at least the emotional stress of this past thursday gave me the inspiration i needed to write. nobody should be surprised that i fell off my update schedule already but i'm hopefully going to post a bit more often now.

keyleth is slicing bananas in the main hold of the ship when he emerges from his quarters at last. her bare feet are hooked around the legs of her chair; she rests on the very edge of the seat, most of her substantial mane restrained in a twisted bun. her eyes lift at the sound as the door shuts behind him, and then return to her cutting board, and then snap back up to him.

"does it do that often?" she asks.

percy stops. "i'm sorry?"

"your hair." she points with the small blade she holds so delicately, like a pen for calligraphy, bits of fruit sticking to the metal. "change colors."

"oh." he runs a hand through it, pushing the salt-sticky strands back from his forehead. he'd only barely noticed as he collected himself this morning, dressed in a new shirt and his dried coat. a surprise, certainly, but surely not the most notable change to his physique since he's awoken. the mark of the outsider is hidden beneath linen wrappings. "no, ah - this would be a first."

"is it permanent?"

"i haven't the slightest, keyleth."

she impales a banana slice on her knife and eats it from the blade. "did you hurt your hand?"

"i -" he glances down at it now, the off-white bandaging. "just a little slip while tinkering."

"you're a tinkerer?"

"an awful lot of questions before breakfast."

"it's past noon." she reaches, pushes the plate she's been pulling fruit from across the table towards him - a meager assortment, hard loaves and green grapes and a few yet unpeeled bananas. "you want lunch?"

past noon. the night and morning must have flown by, he thinks, hungrily consumed by his singular focus. just as well. he pulls out a chair, sits, pulls the plate to him. "have we reached emon?" he pops a grape into his mouth.

"the captain told me two hours about an hour ago," keyleth replies, and returns to cutting the banana before her. "soon, i guess. what's your plan?"

percy drums his fingers on the cold metal of the table. "i get into the duke's mansion. take him out and find evidence to disprove delilah's claim on the throne." there are a few newspapers stacked; he reaches and grabs one, pulls it to him, ignores the printed propaganda and flips to the back.

"take him out?" he can hear keyleth swallow audibly as he rummages through his coat's interior pockets, pricks himself on no less than three small tinker tools before he finds a bit of charcoal. "you mean, as in -"

"if i have to." he occupies one hand with tearing off bits of bread and lifting them to his mouth, the other with roughly sketching out lines over the paper's fine print.

"just - walk right in and --"

"that's the idea." in the back of his mind, the back of his throat, something rumbles with displeasure. _no. six barrels. six bullets._ out of the corner of his eye he can see keyleth opening her mouth, perhaps to protest, but rather than her voice the sound that hits his ear is a heavy thud, a stack of papers dropped. he stills his charcoal, lifts his eyes - to captain adella, to the mound of notebooks and newspaper clippings on the table now before her.

"oh - captain -- thank you!" keyleth rises from her seat - adella steps back as the younger woman rushes into the space she'd occupied, begins to spread the disorganized sheets across the surface. "i've been researching," she begins, by way of explanation. "not - last night, but... when things started to seem out of place. i like taking notes. here." she slides an opened book across the table to him - he catches it, takes in a graphically organized disaster of scribbles and annotations which can't possibly make sense to anyone but keyleth herself. "there's a lot in play here," she continues, lively, as percy squints at the sloppy handwriting, at the scratched lines connecting disparate thoughts. "the duke's guarded. there's - look." she places three clippings down before him, now, one after the other, and he takes them in as she speaks - "the crown killer," and she places a piece from several months back, an opinion theorizing as to the nature of this outbreak of high-profile murders in whitestone - "the clockwork soldiers," and she presents an article he doesn't recognize, a headline extolling the scientific marvel that's dazzling emon - "the witches," she finishes, and presents, bizarrely, an advertisement for emon's famed conservatory, a house of art and science and learning.

he is, he thinks, predictable. he picks up the piece on the clockworks, skims it - breezes past the beginning paragraphs, which seem to exist only to sing praises. he flips to the back, where the nuts and bolts of the inventions are vaguely described and an artist's impression of one of the very mechanical beings who helped rip the red reg from underneath him accompanies the text. "i saw these in whitestone," he comments, and runs the side of his thumb over the hook of the machine's head. incredible craftsmanship.

"it's a lead. i have leads!" there's a long blank wall along the side of the room, some tacks on a shelf, and keyleth runs to grab them - picks up a handful of clippings and begins tacking them up, grouping them. she puts the last that she's carrying up, pokes it with her pointer finger with the force of a stab, force enough to crumple the newspaper around the point of impact. "addermire institute. remember, i told you -"

"the crown killer. yes." percy leaves the clockwork soldier, his breakfast, the sketch that's begun to take shape - rises to his feet and joins her at the wall. the crinkles in her victim run over an image of the institute itself, its island retreat. pinned beside that page is another, bearing a regal three-quarters profile portrait, a face he recognizes.

keyleth's eyes follow his. "pike trickfoot," she acknowledges, and the second she's said the name it is matched with the image. the upturned nose, wise eyes set in a sun-speckled face, the large rounded ears poking through white-blonde hair wrapped back into a bun. he's seen her before, heard the name. advanced medical science in the empire by decades, if memory serves, and advancing still. "she runs the place," keyleth continues. "she's brilliant. i mean - i've heard. i've never met her. i've heard she's amazing. you get it. she's -"

"is she involved?" the pepperbox remains on the desk in his cabin, but his finger twitches, as though searching for a trigger. _six barrels. six names._ two missing. two missing. _pike trickfoot._

"what? no! i mean - i don't - i don't think so. i don't know?" maybe not, then. keyleth shakes her head, flustered now. "i don't think she would. but - she might know something? and i think she'd help, if she does. i've heard -"

"one of her patients?"

"yes. maybe." she nods - he glances to meet her eyes, for a moment, and she offers a trace smile. he ordinarily loathes to interrupt others (those he respects, at the very least), but there is a pattern here already, a rhythm to be settled into, he thinks. she of many words, but wandering, jumbled, none the right ones - he of few words, but chosen, considered, punctuated points. thoughts to be finished.

she hadn't done the most spectacular job of articulating it, but she's right to think that the duke himself may be too well defended to go after first. if he's going to track this conspiracy to its roots, he may have to begin with smaller sprouts. he nods, curtly. "it could be worth a look."

"i can't get you there." adella - he'd almost forgotten she was there. percival glances back to the boat captain, leaning back against the opposite wall. she gestures to the board they've made, to the image of addermire. "guard posts, watchtowers," she explains. "can't bring the skiff up. you'd have to get over there by yourselves."

"by myself," he corrects.

"sure."

"that shouldn't be too hard, right?" keyleth looks at him expectantly. "finding another way over there. right?"

"it's closed down," adella contributes. "no one in, no one out. trickfoot's stopped seeing patients, which isn't like her, either."

percy turns back to the board, exhales. "shouldn't be too hard," a repetition, under his breath. "keyleth, what about the clockworks?"

"oh!" she hurries back to the table, snatches the article he'd been perusing - runs back to tack it up at the center of another grouping she's made. "the clockwork soldiers. apparently they were designed for - private security, i think? the duke's bought a lot of them. or - maybe they were designed for him? a lot of people are buying them for security. but the duke financed the research. built by the grand inventor herself."

"grand inventor?"

"every city has its genius," adella supplies, a flat commentary from the back of the room.

keyleth moves to the side, to point to another clipping - the soldiers, the duke, a woman standing in between. "the grand inventor of emon," she says. "part of the duke's inner circle. doctor anna ripley."

percy moves in closer, peers at the image. the doctor in question is bony and tall, with dark hair wrapped tight and wire spectacles perched on her thin nose. the scale of the photograph, the degree of detail, offers only a suggestion of her features, but clear as day she clasps her arms behind her back, one hand blood and flesh and one hand oil and gears.

"no one knows where she came from." keyleth is just beside him, a murmur as he examines the evidence she's collected. "i guess she just - showed up one day. with inventions, and impressed the duke."

"or impressed delilah," he mutters.

"maybe. she lives and works up the mountains a bit, off of the cloudtop district." she turns and marches back to the table, to rifle through her notes. "i have something here - people call it the clockwork mansion. people talk about it a lot, but - i don't know. i don't think i know why. lots of rumors."

"such as?"

"i don't know." her nose has disappeared into one of her marked-up journals.

he doesn't bother with a sigh. "and the conservatory?"

"sylas has the coven there." there are far fewer writings and clippings tacked to the wall here, mostly advertisements and bits on exhibits, and something that looks like keyleth's own scribblings on witchcraft and rune carving. "it's why it's closed off to the public," she continues, still calling back to him from the table. "he moved us - _them_ there just after the crown killer murders started. delilah was there a lot."

"there'll be evidence."

"there could be. i don't know if you want to fuck with sylas."

"i promise you, the prospect delights me." _eye for an eye. family for family._ take vesper, take julius, take ludwig and oliver and whitney and drive them into sylas briarwood's witch-black heart like a knife. the thing at the back of his throat curls in pleasure. _vengeance._

half the room's space and only a day's familiarity between them, their backs to each other, and it's still as though he can feel keyleth's discomfort traveling back to him through the air, the visceral sense of her morally squirming. he pauses, his hand lingering on one of the images of the conservatory. "keyleth," he begins.

"huh?"

"is this not something you care to be a part of?"

"what? no, i -" she stops. he hears her place her hands flat on the table. "i don't know. it feels wrong. we're just going to kill - stonefell? ripley?"

" _i'm_ just going to kill stonefell and ripley," he corrects. "you're under no obligation."

"i am, though. i think i am." she pauses, breathes. "it's not like i've never killed anyone. but there's - murder. and i don't - they're bad people, or - the duke is, and ripley probably is, too, i mean, anyone who can build _that_ \- but i don't know. how many people do you think you're going to kill on the way to them?"

"a good few, i'd expect." he has few virtues. on his better days he hopes honesty is one of them.

"and they'll be - good people, right? at least some of them?"

"keyleth, i've really no way of knowing."

"right." she breathes out again, slowly. "right. just -"

"is it sylas?"

"sylas is a piece of shit, too." he's not sure if he expected her to hesitate, but she doesn't. "and delilah deserves it. they deserve whatever you have coming for them. but - there has to be a line, doesn't there?"

_no. there doesn't._

a tinge of smoke hits his nostrils, and he turns, finally - keyleth is still facing the table, and in the far corner captain adella has found a stool, kicked up onto it, and has lit herself a cigar. she catches his gaze, lifts an eyebrow, and he lifts his right back. "not bothered by all this talk of murder on board your boat?"

"if it was murder on board my boat, we'd have a problem." she tosses her matches onto the shelf beside her, pulls the cigar from her mouth to clear her speech. "she's paying me for the use of my ship. what you get up to with your boots on the dirt is none of my concern." as an aside, percival makes a mental note to inquire as to where keyleth is finding the money one needs to charter a vessel for any substantial length of time. she certainly isn't wearing it.

adella uncrosses her legs, hits the ground hard in her boots and rises. "should get ready to bring the wale into port," she declares, already on her way out. "clean up your mess when you're done."

he is left, for a minute, in silence with keyleth. he allows a moment, in case she would like to be the one to break it, before he takes the initiative himself. "keyleth."

"yeah?"

"you are under no obligation to help me any further. this is my war."

"it's a war now?"

"with a throne in the balance, it seems an apt descriptor." a throne he doesn't want. a crown he never wanted. an empire of responsibility, requiring wisdom and compassion. he finds himself in deficit of both. but a sister, a sister in stone, and six barrels, six names.

keyleth sighs, nearly laughs, lets her chin drop to her chest and shakes her head as it hangs there, below her hackled shoulders. "i'm with you. i don't know - what, or - but i'm with you."

"you may regret saying that."

"i know." she heaves a great sigh, and straightens up, sets her shoulders. "okay. we need to get you to addermire."

"addermire first?"

"addermire first."

she's already moving to the board - he intercepts her, fixes her with a quizzical glance. "keyleth. addermire is a working theory. sylas and ripley are real leads." _and i want to kill him,_ the back of his head beats out, _i want to kill sylas, i need to kill sylas, i need to end sylas._

"you won't get anywhere near them with the crown killer still running around." there's a note of certainty in keyleth's voice, but something beneath, something that wavers it like ripples made on the surface of a pond by a stirring down below. "trust me," she adds. "they don't just send the killer to get rid of your enemies. he - it - takes people."

she steps around percy, to the board, begins arranging the crown killer clippings in a more logical ordering; he moves to stand next to her, skims the headlines of each. "where is that mentioned?"

"it's not. trust me," she repeats. "it's a guard dog."

"and what makes you think i can get near trickfoot?"

she hesitates. "i hadn't thought of that." he hums, and she shakes her head. "i think you'll have a better chance. she's not - sylas and dr. ripley, they're the duke's inner circle. or - them and the duke, delilah's circle. whichever."

"delilah's."

"right. but dr. trickfoot isn't." she taps the portrait again, the calm, soft visage. "look. the conservatory's suspicious. it's been closed for months and there's all sorts of incidents with black magic happening around it. it's a smart place to look. and you could've found ripley easily enough on your own, right? you saw the clockworks, and she's not exactly hiding. but they won't expect you to know about addermire."

he pauses, considers it. "you may be right."

"i am." assertive. sure - and then a note of sardonic ire. "besides. if you mortally wound anyone, they're already in a hospital."

"keyleth."

"i'm joking. i'm -" her assurances of jest do not sound like someone brushing the matter off - they're low, carry more weight than the remark itself. she sighs. "- joking. it's fine." she's braced herself with a hand against the board. she is not looking at him. "these are bad people. they're going to hurt a lot more people than you and i ever could."

he hums agreement. "true enough."

she inhales deeply, pushes herself off the wall. "then i'm fine. addermire. what's the plan?"

he advances, steps to stand at the wall beside her. "i'd like to get a feel for the city," he says. "delilah isn't going anywhere. we'll take a day. see what reveals itself."

"right." keyleth nods, wraps her arms around herself. "i'll tell adella to prepare the skiff."

"it probably isn't wise for you to come along."

"no, i know." she's already begun to move away, towards the doors. "i'll stay, for now. i don't know if anyone would recognize me." and she stops, then, in her tracks, and rounds on him, repeats, "recognize me."

"i'm sorry?"

"they'll recognize _you_. fuck, i'm so -" she shakes her head, presses two fingers to her temple. "the last emperor's face is still printed on half the coins in serkonos. and you look like him. you've got that - stern de rolo nose. and the - it doesn't matter. and if delilah's pinning the crown killer murders on you, there'll be wanted posters up. with likenesses. you can't -" she points vaguely at his face, and then waves at her own, draws a circle round and round it with her hand. "you have to cover it or something. but emon city guards attack strangers on sight, and it _is_ suspicious, but you -" she stops herself before he can, bites her lip.

his fingers twitch again, tremble. he worked like a man possessed, that night and into the morning, so driven and singular in his focus that much of the detail has passed from his memory. but he recalls now, the makeshift workbench, the leather he took from the clothes in the trunk. the inspiration he gleaned from the shape of the shadows, the way they coalesced before the outsider took form. the pepperbox list was not the only thing to grace his tinker's desk.

"you're right." he nods. "don't worry. i've got it covered."


	5. now ain't no one happy in this miserable place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a fucking YEAR LATER,,...   
> i'm still working on this monstrosity, just at a goddamn snail's pace. i've got most of another chapter in reserve after this one, so with any luck i can climb back into the saddle here, because i really am invested in the meeting of these worlds and in trying to tell this story. thank you to those of you who've stuck with me!

the city looks different viewed through two twin darkened lenses.

the mask is not as polished as it could be, but it suits his purposes - perhaps suits them better than a finer creation would. the glass that hides his eyes has the faintest green tint to it, cut from the bases of dust-covered empty bottles that he doesn't recall retrieving from adella's storeroom. it's a fair material. the coloration adds an obscuring element when viewed from far enough away, a dim shield to hide his eyes without impeding his vision. he's affixed the glass in metal rings, just larger than the circle formed when he touches his pointer finger to his thumb, odd crafting bits mined from the inner pockets of his still-damp jacket - which, as adella brings the ship in to port, he has laid out on the deck to dry in the sun.

he's savaged the contents of his chamber's clothing chest for the discolored leather, swiped sturdy copper wire from the ship's stores to weave a frame. stretched over the wire, nailed and sewn shut, he's formed the long hook of a beak, the image of the swirling smoke - a manifestation of the man he met, or of percival's own mind? he doesn't care enough to ponder it. the mark concealed on the back of his left hand is the only thing which assures him that the former himself is not the latter.

the straps by which he affixes his creation to his head are two stripped and ruined leather belts. he fastens the buckles tight enough that the mask will not shift no matter how vehemently he shakes his head from side to side. the leather bends to accommodate the curve of his forehead. he must have fitted it to his face last night.

the mask itself covers only from his hairline to his cheeks. the downward slope of the beak only partly hides his mouth from view. from the disheveled white hair to the sea-stiffened shirt, with his face so obscured, he could not be mistaken for a de rolo if he strode up to the gates of whitestone castle and announced himself as such. he is a sight to behold.

"you're a sight to behold," adella tells him, a new cigar held as her arms cross before her chest. her boots make for weighted footfalls on the creaking wooden deck.

he leans to rest his elbows on the railing, feels the swaying of the structure beneath him. a behemoth of technology, these whaling vessels, but he'll be happy to have stable earth under his feet again. out across the glistening water is the rising vista of emon, districts of affluence climbing up the steep slopes of the seaside mountains as though scrabbling to escape the impoverished rabble below.

"the idea is anonymity," he responds.

the boat captain offers an appraising huff, raises her cigar to draw a long gout of smoke into her chest. "does that job just fine," she says. "don't see no emperor de rolo on my ship. though you're bound to make a name for yourself besides that one, tramplin' around in that."

"i mean to keep to the shadows."

"right. 'course." adella flicks the spent cigar to the deck, stamps it out beneath her boot and grinds the tip to dust long before the last sparks can get any ideas about the deck wood. percy returns his eyes to the city, but hers remain on him, he's sure, boring. "did you cut up my jackets?"

ah. the leather. "they were at my disposal," he says, and it prompts another scoff from the captain - more scornful than mirthful, this time, he thinks.

"sure you're used to that," she mutters, not so quiet that she could have intended for him not to hear.

"i'll compensate you."

"yeah, you will." she scuffs at the pale ash she's scattered at her heel, stoops to pick up what's left of the cigar. "the girl's bringin' you in on the skiff," she announces. "she's got ways with water."

"what will you be doing?"

"handing over some nicely forged documents so nobody storms my ship to arrest me for idling by the port. suspicious times, these."

there is something in her tone, something which by a gut rising in the base of his body suggests that she blames him for the suspicious state of these times. links him heavily to the circumstance, at the very least. he supposes she can't be faulted for that. if he is not a perpetrator, he surely is a symptom.

he wanders to the chair he left his coat draped across - it smells of sea, and still feels cool to the touch, but in a stinking city under the hot sun of late summer those things both suit him just fine. he has already emptied the tinkering bits that populate the pockets onto the desk in his cabin, and stripped it of all heraldry and decoration - to render him faceless, to reduce the weight, to keep his steps silent. he shakes it now, both to test and to flap out the waterlogged stiffness that's taken the fabric. in an uncommon turn, it does not jingle. vesper would have something to say about that.

he presses out the worst of the stiffness - god, he has _no earthly idea_ how to treat fabric, has never found need to learn, can only cut and sew at all by virtue of his hobby projects. he knew he was pampered, but good lord, his first day out and the rigid sleeves of a coat have vexed him.

it's wearable. he shrugs it on, brushes it down. with the addition of the weight, how it settles on his body, he readjusts his belt, and the holster that sits on the upper curve of his thigh, his metalworked list secured safely within.

hm. he's already given title to the class of his creation, but it couldn't hurt to name the weapon itself.

"are you ready to go?"

by some miracle, he does not jump six inches into the air at keyleth's clear voice cutting through the sea breeze. she's not far from him at all, a thin brown hand draped over the ship's rail. she must move quieter than he would've expected, from how he's seen her fumble and stagger, clumsy and uncoordinated - a cursory glance down at the deck finds that she's wearing no shoes, and idly he wonders if she owns any.

he clears his throat. "ah - yes, keyleth, i'm ready. thank you."

she nods, offers him a pleasant smile. she has made no effort to restrain her hair, and the salt air whips it around her face, and she's wearing a lovely circlet he hasn't seen before, a bronze point dipping down the crest of her forehead and disappearing into her hairline. she gestures him towards the skiff, and as light of foot as he prides himself on being, he feels a great and clunky thing behind her gentle steps, his boots resounding on the deck. she offers him a hand to steady him as he steps into the little boat, and then clambers in behind him.

"oh!" she declares, with one leg still half aboard the wale. "i almost forgot! i got you this." a hand disappears into the wool satchel slung over her shoulder, and withdraws an old and yellowing glass bottle, a poorly fitting cork cut down to fit its mouth. it is mostly filled with a thick, brackish liquid, colored deep red, which does not seem to be of entirely uniform consistency, and leaves traces of thinner fluid on the sides of the bottle as it sloshes around.

he takes it, if only to return to her the use of her hand so she does not fall between the skiff and the ship. he inspects it with a rapt interest - the jar seems once to have had a label of some sort, but it's been removed, and he cannot make out what little lettering is imprinted in the glass.

"what is it, exactly?" he inquires - and hopes, a moment too late, that his curiosity does not come off as ingratitude.

keyleth settles into the skiff, takes a seat on the bench and a moment to rearrange her skirts around her legs. "it's one of those S-and-J elixirs," she announces. "the healing remedies."

"oh." right, of course - it's been a while since he's seen one this close, hasn't had need to get personal with them since the days of the rat plague, but the coloring is similar, he supposes. "of course it is."

"i figured - in case you get into any trouble." she tucks her hair back behind her ear, and shifts somewhat uncomfortably in her seat, a move which sets the skiff rocking back and forth. he quickly grasps the side of the boat with his free hand. the disruption seems to remind keyleth of the task at hand, and she clears her throat and, with awkward haste, sets about lowering the skiff towards the water.

"i'd give it a shake before you drink it," she calls back to percy, who has set his attention to finding a suitable pocket in the interior of his jacket where he might stow the bottle. "it keeps separating. probably because my ingredients aren't as good as what you get in actual laboratories in the city. but it should work just as well."

it's a train of logic that, after a moment, brings a furrow to his brow. the bottle is halfway into a pocket and he pulls it back out, holds it up. "you made this?"

keyleth glances back to him. "oh - um, yeah," she says, allows herself a brief smile of pride before bashfulness sets in. "i'm pretty good with, um - alchemy, that kind of thing."

he returns the bottle to the pocket, straightens out his jacket. he is, for a moment, unsure how to take the kindness of the gesture - the consideration to undertake it, the time she must have invested, the components purchased with her own sparse funds. were he a better man he'd think to turn it down.

"that's certainly something," he decides eventually.

she ducks her head. "it's not that impressive. i'm just following a recipe."

"no, it's -" he clears his throat, cuts off the start of reassurances. this isn't an interaction he'd meant to prompt. "thank you. that's all."

as she looks back to reply, the boat which bears them, which has fallen beneath both of their considerations, demands its due of attention - the skiff hits the water, and the impact jars percy and nearly unseats keyleth. she grabs at the chains to catch herself, but makes a poor selection of which to pull, and the entire skiff begins to tip before she quickly lets go and they drop back flat into the water, the lowering chains jingling and newly-taken-on salt water pooling around percy's boots.

"i'm sorry," she begins, a rapid panic inching into her voice.

he cuts her off quickly with a raised hand, a shake of his head. "no, no - it's fine, it's -" he stops to clear his throat, flicks a stray bit of white hair back from his glasses - stops, on that thought, to straighten the glasses themselves. "you're quite alright. i doubt i'd be any handier around the workings of a ship."

"i'm better with the stuff under the water than the stuff on top of it," she agrees, and percy's mind rapidly summons images of swarms of snapping eels before he decides not to ask what she means.

nope - just straightening them won't do, there's water on the lenses. he takes his spectacles off, ducks his naked face as he goes to work scrubbing them clean on the hem of his shirt. he is aware, vaguely, of keyleth's eyes on him, and determines not to acknowledge it, but an instinctive glance upward sets her hastily returning to the handling of the boat. just as well.

"will those fit under the mask?" she asks, once he's returned his glasses to their proper perch and she's freed the skiff from the wale. he nods. "even with the little - dinglies?" she presses, and gestures to her temples - indicating the additional lenses, he guesses. he nods again, and holds up the plague mask, fits it over his face for a moment to demonstrate. through the greenish lenses he sees keyleth shudder.

"i was careful making it," he says, the first two words slightly muffled before he's quite lowered the mask from his face. "it wouldn't do to run about the city blind."

"right," she agrees. "it's a little creepy. not to, um - make any judgments about you! or - your tastes, it's just kind of -"

"no, you're absolutely within your rights, it's meant to be a little creepy."

"oh. right. okay." she trails off, and he resolves to allow the silence to last as long as possible.

the skiff has begun to drift, and her focus leaves him for a moment. if he'd expected her to man the steering mechanisms - well, if he's honest, he hadn't given it a thought, but she ignores the levers and gears, and leans over the side instead to dip her fingers into the water. _eels,_ he thinks again, and nearly shudders, but nothing rises to the surface to bite, and in a moment they're on their way, picking up speed as the skiff takes off towards the port. the fast-moving water runs in rivulets between keyleth's fingers - and if he's not mistaken, there's a very faint, bluish film over her eyes. ways with water indeed.

she takes her hand from the sea, shakes the water from it and switches to the proper means of maneuvering a boat as they pull towards solid ground. the transformation from comfortable witchcraft to a practiced veil of normality is as natural as shrugging on a coat before stepping outside.

"you know how to get to addermire, right?" keyleth prods, and he can't help but feel a little like he's being dropped off for lessons by his mother. he nods curtly, intones a quiet _mhm_. he's studied the maps, the documents she collected. "okay," she says. "i can pick you up there when you're finished, so you don't have to sneak all the way back here, but you'll have to shut off the floodlights. you can do that when you're done, and - that'll be the signal, okay? and i'll come get you."

"alright, keyleth." he allows a small note of a grudging child's tone to seep into his voice, and it gets a little smile out of her - and by some minor miracle he smiles back, lets just a hint of white teeth gleam between his lips as he's perching the mask on his forehead, fastening the leather straps.

"i'm just checking," she mumbles, and - covertly, with a glance over the docks for unwelcome eyes - dips two fingers into the water to steady the boat as he climbs out. "oh," she adds, like a thought's just returned to her - "there's a street gang around emon called the howlers. if they give you any trouble, say that kiki sent you, and they shouldn't bother you anymore."

he's sure he's failing to keep disbelief off his face. "your name has weight with a street gang?" he demands incredulously.

she flushes, ducks her head for a second, and looks back up with a manufactured frown. "i have friends," she asserts.

"right."

"people know me! just - just say you're handling something for kiki, okay?"

he shakes his head, stomps the sea stench from his boots into the cobblestones - oh, he's glad for the stability, for the ground that doesn't sway. "alright, kiki."

she wrinkles her nose up at him. "just - ugh. i'll be watching for the signal, okay? if i don't see it by dawn tomorrow i'm gonna come looking for you."

"i'll more than likely be dead in addermire."

"probably. but i'll poke around the docks and say i tried." she shoots him a smile and pushes the skiff off from the dock, and he watches her clumsily turn it around to start her course back to the wale.

he turns to the city, and pulls the mask down over his face.

he earns himself a few odd looks from workers and fishermen as he passes - justified, he supposes, but no outright hostility towards this strange man in a long coat under the blazing sun, this menacing figure in the open. karnaca is a colorful city, he supposes - and he thinks of a book he read on the dust district, the loose swarming sediment kicked up by the silver mines, and the scarves worn over mouths to keep it from their lungs - and he thinks of the proclivity towards masks that dawned in whitestone during the rat plague, for supposed sanitation, and he thinks of the bloodflies that infest the summers down here in the south, and perhaps it isn't that menacing after all. only a touch melodramatic.

instinct nudges him to stroll confidently to the checkpoint, to barely acknowledge the guards at all, to step through the wall of light without a thought. he can't, of course. he'll be incinerated faster than thought, but such a new status quo is going to take a bit of getting used to. he's always been of the kind that security was in place to protect, not the kind security was in place to protect against. he ducks behind a message board when a guard's head turns his way, keeps out of his line of sight, and then darts across to a stairway leading downward. it's in the cellars of this city that he'll find a way forward, he thinks, among others cast aside, amid the guts.

he spends some time poking around underground, searching for a passage to take him deeper into the city, before a grizzled man on a thin mattress helpfully raises his rough-scraped voice to inform him that if he's looking for the black market, it's down that way and to the left. "i wasn't," he replies, almost cheery, "but i certainly am now, friend, thank you," and gives him a handful of coins for his trouble.

he could've found it if he'd known to search for it - he identifies quickly the marks on the walls which denote direction, which lead shady buyers with sketchy intent to this shiftiest of locales. it's the basement of an apartment building, with a window with bars over it and items displayed within locked cages. a woman stands at the window, nearing the tail end of her middle age, with wisps of untended gray hair flying free from her bun and small thin-rimmed oval glasses and the hard lines of a hard life pressed into the wrinkles of her face. percy does not remove the mask when he approaches, and she does not question it.

the saleswoman slides open a slat at the base of the barred window, a space large enough for products and currency and hands to pass through. "you look like you're looking for something," she says, like she's said it a half a hundred times.

"i am," he agrees, though even as he says the words he still isn't sure just what - his eyes scan over the array of merchandise, and light up at familiar mechanized shapes, and he gestures. "are those rewire tools?"

the woman nods, rubs the back of her neck. "those'll do any of the sokolov-joplin machines in the city, most of what the guard uses, long as you've got quick hands. nobody who's suggested an intent to try it on ripley's inventions has come back to tell me how it went, so that's the only guarantee you're getting."

"that's - quite enough for me."

"no refunds," she adds quickly, firmly.

"no, certainly not," he agrees. "ah - two of those, if you don't mind, and a spool of copper wire, if you have it?"

she nods, and as she moves away from the window he hears keys clicking against locks. she names a price over her shoulder as she's retrieving the items, and by the time she's slid them across to him he's already pushed adequate coin through to her side. she makes a scoop with her hand and sets its edge on the counter, sweeps the coins off into the pocket of her apron. "pleasure doing business," she says, the pleasantry rough and tired.

"it certainly was," he replies, and sets off. it'll take a bit of doing, this idea crystallizing in his mind, but he's sure he has the parts for it, and he's certainly taken apart and reassembled whitestone castle's alarm systems enough times to know sokolov security tech inside and out.

he needs, first, to locate an alarm. there is a large one in the guard station by the wall of light, but that is attended, and would draw too much attention. he's thinking smaller. he devotes nearly forty minutes to creeping through apartments flanking the wall of light, searching for a paranoid enough tenant - and finally finds one, though not of a make he's overly familiar with. well. he'll make do. he sets to work affixing the rewire tool, fiddling with the screwdrivers that fill his coat's lining, threading the copper wire and unspooling it to his needs - it's a piece of work, to make the triggering system remote, but if he's nothing else, he's clever.

with the help of the gifts from his voidlike friend - which, as an experimental hop across someone's living room confirms for him, are quite real, and function just as well in this world as the landscape of his dreams - he ascends from the apartment's balcony to a rooftop just over the wall of light. the distance clean over the wall is too great for his magical reach to ascend, and a tentative test of a foothold quickly reveals he'll have no luck scaling the building's side the old fashioned way - but there's a flat enough surface on which to perch, and it's from there that he sets the alarm off, starts it wailing through the neighborhood. quickly he tosses the wire back to the balcony, and goes flat on his belly on the shingles, and watches carefully for the reaction of the guards - and surely, those on his side of the wall run to investigate. a few well-planned dashes of smoke find percy safely on the ground just beside the wall, and the second rewire tool is drawn from his coat and affixed to the operating panel. a few short sparks signal - hopefully! - that his work has succeeded, and drawing a deep breath, nearly thinking to pray (but no, of course not) - he gasps out a quiet, "fuck," and dashes through the electricity.

he comes safely through the other side. he shouldn't have doubted himself. before he can be spotted by any patrols on this side, he swiftly pulls himself by magic up to an overlooking balcony.

belly of the beast now, percival. quiet steps.

out of morbid curiosity, perhaps, he lingers to watch the fruits of his work. he sees the two guards he'd lured away return, irate with heavy steps, to assume their posts. neither steps back through the wall of light, but they'll try at some point, more than likely - and more than likely before anyone has taken notice of his tampering. that'll be murder, he thinks, whether or not he's watching when lightning boils their blood.

_good,_ he thinks.


	6. on the streets of karnaca, i met you long ago

stealth was never something percy trained extensively in - the pinnacle of his dexterity residing in his quick and careful fingers, not his light and well-placed steps - but all the same, he gets a decent twenty minutes or so of pride in his newfound aptitude before he finds himself with a blade at his throat.

he has kept to the rooftops, for the most part, but has ventured deep enough into the district that most buildings are too tall to scale without working his way through the interior. he doesn't like his chances in those populated halls, and he doesn't fancy leaving a trail of the bodies of civilians unlucky enough to spot him. he descends as subtly as he can, angles his shot to propel himself into the mouth of a narrow alleyway - but he thinks a patrolling guard may have caught movement from the corner of his eye, and as he steps softly backwards into the alley he can hear idle discussion with the man's partner, _did you see something there_ -

he stays tight to the wall, where the shadows will hopefully afford him some small cover - keeps a hand extended behind him, feeling along the bricks, slowly, so slowly moves backwards, his eyes locked on the street to watch for exploring figures with searching eyes. none appear, and when his hand on the wall feels the give of an unlocked metal gate - to the small backyard lot of the apartments he's inching along, he assumes, he's seen the same as he's crossed the city - he quickly sidesteps in and shuts the door behind him.

immediately, there is pressure on his trachea.

well. that brief and shining moment of competency actually lasted longer than he thought it would.

his hands lock, fingers splayed at his side. a twitch towards his hip, he thinks, would be ill advised - but a moment's assessment of his discomfort finds it's the flat of the blade pressed to his neck. not the edge - that, he can feel against his collarbone, not biting into the skin but close enough for its presence to be known. interesting. the wielder, he's sure, could hurt him very badly very quickly, but perhaps doesn't mean to, not if he's clever, not if he keeps very still and says just the right things.

"i like your mask," murmurs a voice against his ear - female, low and thick with a sultry sap. her breath heats the shell of his ear. she's taller than him.

"kind of you," he answers, and the movement of his throat makes him a touch more aware of the blade against his skin. he swallows. "that tickles."

he is answered with a silky and rumbling laugh from his captor. she has the sort of voice he's heard a hundred times at court, from the mouths of the most skilled political types, that honeyed invocation, fashioned to smooth the edges down. over tea it might be splendidly disarming. as he stands he is less than put at ease. "i like him," her voice drips, and with a moment's spike of panic he realizes she is not addressing him. he focuses his senses, listens, _who else's presence did he back into unawares_ \- and in the quiet he hears the soft scrape of fabric over fabric.

"you look like a man who gets into places he doesn't belong."

that's a different voice, not the woman holding him, more distant, further behind him. this second unseen companion is a woman, too, he thinks, but despite the voice's higher register there's a quality to it that's harder to pin down, more elusively gendered. it is light and lilting, no less carefully practiced than the rich buttering of the one holding him at knifepoint, but it reads more dignified than sensual. he'd almost call it noble.

he swallows again. "a trade i'm sure you've far more practice at than i have."

"bold of you." he hears, again, the movement of fabric, the click of soles against stone. they've risen to their feet.

"thank you." oh, fuck, percy, might as well. "howlers, i presume?"

the hum he gets from the warm-voiced woman is answer enough. it's the second voice that answers, with a few steps towards him, almost an appraisal - "astute, too."

he lets his breath rush out of him in a noncommittal sigh. "took a stab in the dark," he confesses. "i'm new in town, haven't many names to guess from." armed and obscured figures lurking in the alleys, unwelcome in the streets - _roguish types_ seemed a more likely scenario than guards, and either he got lucky or there's something of a monopoly on petty crime in this city. knowing what he knows of emon, he wouldn't be surprised.

he hears a small exhale from the second figure - who seems to him a woman, he decides, after further observation, less from the inherent qualities of her voice and more from the way she uses it, the gentle and coordinated way it lifts and declines, the conducting of it all.

he hears another step taken towards him. "i'm a friend of kiki's," he says quickly, before he can think better of it, and he hears the footsteps stop.

there is a long and measured silence. he keeps his lips closed, chooses to let her break it when she chooses, how she chooses, on her terms, and she does, with a dubious echo. "keyleth sent you," she says slowly, words weighed carefully - well. so the odd witch _does_ have some sort of _friends in low places._ "to find me?"

his breath is half a laugh, and presses him uncomfortably against the knife - he clears his throat. "ah, _no._ certainly not," he replies. "i haven't the foggiest clue who i'm speaking to."

she takes another silent moment to consider, and then commands with clear authority - "zahra, let him go."

the knife is removed from his throat, and the hand that held it swiftly spins him around, and immediately he comes face to face with a stunningly tall woman, night-dark skin and lush features and keen and piercing eyes, her black hair in two voluminous braids beginning at her crown and dangling down her back. she steps aside - and the second speaker is a woman, he's sure now, as she comes into his view. she is far smaller than her subordinate, nearly half a foot smaller than him. she is pale, and wears only one braid, tight and deftly woven from shining straight dark hair. her clothes, though neatly kept, have the roughness of the street to them, and the set of her shoulders holds only a self-imposed nobility, a dignity constructed within cheaply spun cotton and worn leather and low station. her features, sharp and slanted as they are, have a gentleness to their edges, a warmth buried in the dark centers of her skeptically narrowed eyes, and he feels that she is looking at him and into him and through him, that she is evaluating each inch of that which lives in him down to his toes, and for a strange and foreign second he is almost afraid to be found wanting.

though he's not sure where the impulse originates, where the rising respect hails from - he inclines his head.

"keyleth's keeping strange company these days," she remarks, and the lofty tone comes down on his head though the words are directed at no one in particular.

"i've made the same observation, actually," he returns.

she snorts. her companion twirls her knife between her limber fingers as she saunters past her, goes to drape herself across a worn-down couch shoved back against the bricks.

"is keyleth in trouble?" the paler creature questions, and if he didn't know better he'd say that was real concern.

"not so far as i'm aware." not entirely true.

"ordinarily she'd come to us if she was in trouble," she asserts.

"i really wouldn't know anything about that."

"what would you know something about?"

he falters a moment. she's forthright, no bashful caution, no question of what knowledge she's entitled to - only what she wants. "nothing i'm inclined to share," he answers.

she purses her lips, draws a pouty furrow between her brows, tips her head. "come on," she says, and her voice has dropped to a persuasive purr. "any friend of kiki's, right? maybe i can help."

"would you?" he offers only an even, careful skepticism, more challenge than confirmation, and her simpering expression hardens, withdraws.

"maybe we can help each other," she amends.

for all her disarming posturing, for all the silk she weaves, that is the first thing she's said that relaxes him. she wants something from him. this he can navigate. this he is comfortable in. "i'm very busy," he says.

"it's only a little thing," she returns, and offers a small curling smile. "you scratch my back. i'm sure there's something i can do for you." and yes, he's vividly aware of the keen and echoing absence in his skull where a plan ought to be, but how much of his hand is he willing to show to gutter thieves and silver tongued opportunists?

"we'll say it at the same time," his opponent announces. "we'll go on three. zahra, would you count us down?"

zahra is cleaning her nails with the point of her knife. her gaze rises with renewed interest, and she arches a brow at percy with piercing curiosity. "three," she begins. "two. one."

neither party speaks.

to his surprise, the woman before him lets out a peal of laughter, clear and honest. "well, that just speaks poorly of both of us," she says, with something like delight. "come on, actually now."

"like the honest people we clearly aren't?"

"yes," she agrees happily, a pleased and mirthful sound. "come on. three, two..."

well, he thinks, this can't possibly make too many more problems for him than he has already. "i need to get to addermire," he says, and in the same moment she begins, "i need someone to go to -"

he has finished speaking and she has trailed off, her lips parted as she regards him, processes him. "addermire," she echoes.

"yes, that's what i said."

some glossy coating she had before applied seems now to have been stripped away. her brows have lowered, her lips set firm. behind her, he notices zahra has stopped playing with her knife.

"are you playing some sort of game?" she demands.

"hardly."

"what do you want in addermire?"

"i've business with dr. trickfoot."

"nobody's got business with pike trickfoot."

"i have."

"what business?"

"my business."

she's fast on her feet - he has time enough to reach his gun but not to pull it free, his thumb is on the hammer but has not pulled it back before she's reached him. he could still withdraw it, fire clean into her stomach, and he would, if she attacked, but in the second that he hesitates she does not move to harm him. with one hand she seizes his mask by its hooked beak and shoves upward. he feels leather scrape uncomfortably against his forehead, feels it catch the rim of his spectacles and knock them upward, feels his hair rumple and twist around the straps.

she steps back from him, then, blurry in his poor unfiltered vision - but with the green lenses removed he can see clearly the light olive color of her skin, the reflective indigo of hair so completely black, like the glint of raven feathers. he makes a decision, perhaps ill advised, and takes his hand from his hip, lifts it instead to fix his skewed glasses.

"awfully handsome face to cover up," this stranger comments.

percy clears his throat, lets an awkward breath go. "that's my business, too."

"suppose that's fair." she crosses her arms, taps a toe on the cobblestones. "i'm vex."

"i -" is this wise? _is this wise? is this cautious? is this safe?_   no, no, of course not, not remotely, when has he ever claimed any such virtue? "percival."

she nods, and advances a step, her eyes boring straight into his. "percival, i want you to look at my face."

an eyebrow lifts. "i'm looking at it," he replies, bemused.

"closer, dear," she says, and lifts her chin, and obediently he takes in every angle and curve. in his mind he finds the lines he'd draw to recreate her in three-dimensions on his grid paper, home in his workshop, where he designs his gadgets and fancies - the dotted seam of her cheek's hollow, below the prominence of the cheekbone, where the shadows fall on her thin straight nose, the press of her lips. through the muggy city air he's fairly certain she's wearing a perfume.

"alright, that's enough," she declares, a lower voice tinged by the lift of her upper lip, a slight frown. "you're starting to creep me out." he opens his mouth, thinks to formulate an indignant reply in spite of the warmth rising to his cheeks, but she cuts him off before he can start. "whatever. think you could recognize it?"

"your -" he huffs half a confused breath. "with some certainty, yes."

"good," she announces shortly, and as the breath leaves her lungs her demeanor changes in an instant, adopts a more formal and informative authority, and she gestures vaguely in the direction of the further depths of the city. "the only way to addermire's by the rail car, and the station's guarded, heavily. multiple security checkpoints before you're allowed to board the car to the island. you'd have a difficult time getting all the way inside without being spotted."

"i would've assumed as much," he answers.

"right," she returns, with a near note of irritation. "anyway. i can get you there, i know how, but i'm not going to do it for free. you'll need to help me once you're there."

_nobody has business in addermire,_ his ass. well. for better or worse, his interest is piqued. "i'll need some specifics."

"you'll manage without," she replies, with a smile. "all i want from you, percival - the rail tracks are electrocuted. i'm going to turn them off, the ones in this part of the city, i know a man who can make that happen. if you're quiet, and quick, you can climb up and walk straight along the tracks into the station, and be on your way to addermire. once you're there, you're on your own, but percival, i'd like it if you took a careful look around for me."

_a careful look,_ he thinks.

she wants something out of the institute, then, something of value - _something worth something._ medicinal items, perhaps, things difficult to come by in the gutters of a downtrodden city, that'd fetch a fair amount of coin on the black market. a doctor's notes or formulas may fetch more, provided there's someone here smart enough to make sense of them. or simpler, even; he recalls reading that addermire in its prime was well-furnished to say the least, a popular retreat for wealthy hypochondriacs. there's got to be plenty there worth stealing even if one looks no further than the decorations.

"a careful look," he echoes.

she smiles, a confirmation. "just poke that wretched beak into a few dark corners, darling."

"and what am i carefully looking for?"

"me." oh, that's interesting. that's something. she delivers it frankly, flatly, does not falter. "my face. wherever you find it skulking."

"and," he begins, "what do i do when i spot it?"

"you help me." her arms uncross, hands retasked to straightening the wrinkled leather of her tightly-buttoned coat. "i'm sure you'll work something out, clever thing like you. and you'll take care of whatever business you have with trickfoot, i really can't bring myself to care what it is." she stops for a second - looks over her shoulder to her lanky companion, gently intones, "zahra, could you take care of the rail tracks?"

this second woman stows her knife at her belt, swings her elegant shawl to conceal it, rises to her stupendous height. "give me twenty minutes," she says, and passes her towards the gate. as she steps to percy's side she stops, and leans to him, and murmurs warmly in his ear - "i'll pay you nicely for anything interesting of the good doctor's you happen to collect," she says, and with a grand sweep of air continues on her way.

vex rolls her shoulders back, as if shrugging something off. "with luck, the current'll stay shut down for an hour, maybe a bit less," she says, "but that's not a promise, so you'll want to get moving. you're sure you've got my face in your head?"

it'd be a difficult face to forget. "i'm sure," he says.

"good." she straightens her clothes again, and goes to settle into the well zahra's body has left in the old couch. "if you think i'll be pleased when you're done," she declares, "you might find me at the crone's hand, down in the dust district. if you're not sure either way, don't trouble yourself to come knocking."

she lifts a hand, draped delicately at the wrist, and makes a dainty sort of shooing motion to him. bemused, perplexed, and newly purposeful, percy tugs his mask back down and turns to leave the alley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love vex! i have a hard time capturing her but i love her!! percy is a dumbass!!!


	7. we step into war with our hearts on the line

the strange women are good for their word. it's easy enough to find a spot by the rails to sit tight and wait until, with a low descending hum, the electricity running through them flickers and dies. he stays low as he creeps along them, keeps a wary eye turned downward in case anyone should look up, but no wandering gazes fall upon him. he easily bypasses the station's checkpoints and climbs into a waiting rail car, and with a push of the lever he's off.

the entry to the institute is quiet as the grave, no patrols to be seen, no patients milling around. bits of broken glass and wood are scattered on the ground, some fallen leaves collected in corners; there is some stacked luggage to be found pushed against the fences, but from the way the color's been leeched from the leather it looks like it's been out in the sun for a long while, and rained on more than once. a few suitcases have popped open, papers and blouses strewn about. the groundskeepers, he supposes, have been let go - who could say how long it's been since these stones have seen a broom?

it's eerie, to say the least.

strange, considering how sparsely populated this place is, but a poster has been put up for his arrest. for the benefit of the guards, percy supposes, just in case he comes poking about. the duke knows he's something here worth hiding, even if he doesn't know that percival knows as much. he adjusts the straps of his mask, makes sure it hangs low enough over his face, and swallows the turning of his stomach. the words flanking his likeness designate him _the crown killer_. at least they don't name him emperor.

there are open windows high on the exterior walls, too high for him to hope to reach were his options limited to scrabbling up the stonework from handhold to handhold. thankfully, they are not, and a few black dashes brings him to the top. he stifles a cough, closes his lips tight and swallows hard to wet his throat. the more he does that, the more he tastes smoke.

"something's going on here," a deep voice muses from below him, and the spike of panic in his chest nearly causes him to lose his balance - but he quickly grips the frame of the window, and steadies himself, and when he peers down within, the human element he'd nearly failed entirely to notice does not seem aware of him at all. two men, identified by dress as emon's grand guard. here to watch over a secret neither is privy to. he lowers himself, listens as the same voice continues - "after last night, i'm sure of it."

something going on indeed. _having trouble keeping our house in order, are we, delilah,_ he thinks to himself, with a distinct taste of smugness in his mouth. she can play like she's holding her cards close to her breast, but if her hidden affairs are trickling down to stew suspicion in the guts of her own people, blind and fumbling in their loyalty as they are, he can't imagine she's enough precautions in place to keep her secrets from him.

"i saw something," the guard is saying, the same guard, his gruff tones unsettled, unnerved. "and whatever i saw - it didn't move like a person."

the second guard is sitting, his forearms braced on his knees. his voice is older. "before i got transferred to addermire, i saw one of the crown killer crime scenes," he tells the other. "whoever tore that old couple apart, they were enjoying it."

_crown killer, crown killer._ his hand twitches towards his gun. the confirmation echoes in his head, reverberates in his skull, another name and he's _already close_ \- idly, he thinks to thank keyleth.

"so what do you think, then?" the younger guard demands.

"i don't know," the other says. "coming back at dawn. smudges of blood on the windows. i don't know what to think. maybe the duke found some new bear or ape from wildemount. it keeps me up at night, just thinking about it." his cigar is still lit when he flicks it to the ground, does not bother to crush it with his shoe as he rises to stand. going to patrol, percy thinks, and then - hold on. he's unsure, through the glassy eyes of the mask, but there's almost an orange fog that clings to the man as he moves, trails off of him. he focuses, and when the taste of smoke rises in his mouth he lets it swirl and strengthen, and when the man rounds the corner he can still see him, his outline in faint fog and his eyes gleaming like bright copper coins, clear through the wall.

well. that'll be useful. he blinks to dismiss it, and the silhouette disappears.

the crown killer is here. it moves like an animal and murders like a man. he only needs the name, the designation to burn into the barrel, the moniker of the prey he stalks here, in its waterlocked den, where delilah has leashed it until she needs to unseat another empire. what did its mother call it?

he moved inward towards the doors.

the grand entry hall of the late addermire institute is in as great a state of disrepair as the outer terraces. the concentration of guards is far higher within, but consigned to the ground as they are, he stays unseen moving through the upper windows, finding perches atop well-anchored chandeliers. there is a wall of light barring entry to the interior depths of the institute, and standing before it, a woman pleading for her children's health. he ignores both, and grants himself entry through a small window onto the second floor.

immediately, he is face to face with an alarm system primed to blare out a warning cry, and straight away he disconnects it. he can hear voices, muffled, around the other side of the island of armchairs and room dividers and potted plants at the center of this little chamber, something he may have to play a stealthy game of ring-around should anyone wander in his direction.

the sign over the doorway to his left marks that section of the institute _disease treatment._ he wrinkles his nose.

_a careful look,_ vex said, but he's sure he'll have plenty of time to scour the unsavory corridors of this wretched place after his work's done, and when he's sure he won't be interrupted at any moment by the rampage of a man feral and unhinged enough to be mistaken for a bear. he ignores the side doors, and waits for a pause between patrolling guards, and quickly darts across the room to the elevator waiting, doors open, at the heart of the twisting staircase. a helpful plaque on the wall notes the fourth floor as dr. trickfoot's offices. he's practically been invited. he presses himself to the side of the lift and presses the fourth floor button.

probably a terrible idea, as the movement of the elevator is rather noticeable and the mechanisms that lift it are by no means silent, but no one seems to turn his way. less fortunately, there's a guard just outside the doors as they crank open - at least one, at any rate, and certainly more unless he's talking to himself. percy keeps himself flattened as best he can against the side.

"make sure she stays where we want her," the guard is instructing. "trickfoot never leaves addermire. remember that."

"sir," another voice begins - squirrely, percy notes, the tone of a man in trouble with his superior. "it's just that she went missing the other night, and i'm still not sure how she got out."

"maybe we're not clear on this, corporal," the first returns. "in case anyone asks, the good doctor never leaves the grounds unless it's on official business for the duke. got it?"

"i think i understand, sir."

the first guard does not spot him as he turns to head off down the corridor. percy silently wedges his foot in the path of the gate to prevent it from closing should someone on a lower floor call the elevator before he's had time to plan his path from here. _never leaves addermire,_ he thinks. the way the man's tone twisted on _the good doctor._ keyleth's stumbling assurances of the woman's moral quality. perhaps trickfoot is less an ally than a prisoner - perhaps, though he won't absolve her so quickly, and on such incomplete information. he thinks, suddenly, to check the list, and withdraws his pepperbox from its holster, and quietly turns the barrels - _delilah briarwood, sylas briarwood, kerrion stonefell, professor anders_ \- oh. something he hadn't noticed as he'd readied himself this morning: the fifth barrel, previously unmarked, now lettered with darkly gleaming script the same as the former four, another condemnation. _dr. anna ripley._ unsurprising, and he feels the same twitch in his finger as he thinks of his trigger, his steady aim, and another marked to die.

the sixth barrel remains blank, but could fit pike trickfoot's name quite nicely, should he find her wanting when he weighs her. he holsters the weapon, and focuses the energy in his mind to scope out his surroundings. the first guard, he guesses, must be too far away now for the orange fog to outline his location - but the subordinate who he'd terrorized is clearly depicted seated at a desk, eyes forward. that won't do at all.

with the aid of a small knife to cut through the binding threads, percy pulls a button from the collar of his coat - takes aim, and tosses it at the door across the room. it clinks against the glass and clatters to the floor. his enemy pushes out his chair and rises to his feet, goes to investigate, and turns his back to percival, and in that moment he lunges forward on quiet feet and seizes the man with one arm wrapped around his neck. before he can begin to struggle free of what is an admittedly weak chokehold, percy sinks the knife up to its hilt into the back of his throat. there is a soft squelching, and a tactile scrape against the spine, and the gurgling of blood in the mouth, and the man goes limp in his arms.

percy drags the body back behind the desk, and cleans his blade and his hands on its uniform. it spewed forth a good amount of blood onto the sleeve of his jacket in its dying spasms, and the thick dampness has soaked clean through to stick his shirt to his skin. those stains won't come out easily. he thinks he'll ask keyleth if she knows any tricks - for fresh and laundered outerwear, he'll suffer her moral disapproval.

there is a piece of paper tacked up on the office door. this has been laughably easy so far. he stoops to read it - _dr. pike trickfoot won't be working in her office today... recuperation auditorium... not to be disturbed... key in her office._ perfect.

another thing. he could stop here, proceed towards his goal, but he gives in to curiosity. _the sneak thief is to remain in disease treatment until i interrogate him and decide on his fate. we've got him locked up in the little plant conservatory there. no one is allowed to speak to him or even enter that room._

that's interesting.

easy enough thing to hand a thief over to the guard on the mainland, to hold him and try him and send him away - all, of course, presuming that his only slight against the crown is thievery, that he hasn't gone creeping through a shadowy foreclosed medical theatre containing much more than what he set out to snatch, that he hasn't seen something he wasn't meant to. no, percy decides - that's not just interesting. that's _promising._

he'll slip inside trickfoot's office, first, grab the key and anything else he can find - like, perhaps, an audiograph. delightful. it's always fascinating to see what people deem worth recording. he presses the button to play the inserted sheet.

"this place gets worse by the day," comes the tinny, lightly distorted answer to his prayers. he thinks he's safe in assuming that the voice - female, gentle, soft and open - belongs to the doctor. "it's getting harder to make my voice heard with the grand guard, like they think what's in my head has nothing to do with what's in my heart. i've been having trouble sleeping." here she exhales, almost a cynical huff of a laugh, and percy can imagine the irritated look on that impish little face, the blond hair falling from behind her ear as she lowers her forehead into her hands. "duke stonefell seemed overprotective at first, but increasingly... i'm a prisoner in my own lab. even when i'm with friends, i... i always feel like there's someone listening in, like i have to watch my words." another exhale, this one a sigh. "what really angers me is the loss of my work. there's so few people looking out for the poor workers of this city, since - these days. i hate feeling like i'm needed somewhere and i'm not there." a quiet shifting, and then a clink - a glass lifted, sipped from, and set back down on a desk. trickfoot makes a quiet dissatisfied sound. "i'll keep working. i can't do much else." with a click, the recording shuts off.

a decent person, if he knows the good from the rest, though if recent events have proven anything to him, he can hardly claim such insight.

he takes the lift back down to the second floor, and unlocks the disease treatment ward with the key lifted from trickfoot's desk. there are several guards between him and this held intruder, if he still lives, and no high ledges to keep to, which presents a small issue. he steals quietly into a side room lined with stretchers - one occupied - and swipes a thin pillow, and muffles his gun, the same as he did with ramsay. he waits until one man strays too far from his compatriots, and dispatches him with a clean shot through the head; the thud of the body brings another guard running, and she meets a slightly noisier end.

that could've gone better - but all else being equal he's ready to congratulate himself on an absolutely adequate handling of the situation when socked feet hit the floor behind him.

ah, shit. the sleeping guard's awake. percy dodges upward onto a bookshelf, and is met with an indignant cry of _what the FUCK was that_ from the man as he beholds the void magic his quarry wields, and the last of the three guards he'd previously counted has rushed in to join him - an explosion tears free from the gun's third barrel, and a bullet rips through that man's eye while his half-conscious friend is still searching for his sword. percy jumps, pulls himself along his line of sight to the point in the air just above him, and out of the rushing smoke he drops straight onto him - _oh,_ that was no fun for his ankles, he may regret that for a while - and pushes the muzzle of the list hard into the flesh of the man's neck, and fires a fourth time.

well. a clean enough job. shouldn't give him much trouble so long as no more of the grand guard wander into this ward. he'll lock up behind him. no alarms rung - this time, anyway. he needs to be more careful.

little plant conservatory, little plant conservatory - well. that's not much of a conservatory in his book, and those are some piss-poor excuses for plants, but he supposes the quality of amenities is in keeping with what he's seen of the rest of this place. there is a figure seated in a chair, seemingly tied - set to face the room's inward windows, and percy would be able to see their face were they not focused on something down and to their left, and as they've twisted their body their hair has fallen in a sheer black curtain to obscure them. their apparel is rough, low quality, but kept tight to their body, without drapes to softly rustle or folds to snag on things. good clothes for keeping quiet. this ought to be his sneak thief.

when he opens the door to the conservatory, the prisoner has already finished freeing their left hand from their bonds and has focused with new mobility on their right. they manage this with impressive speed, and lift their chin to look at him, and percy stops short.

this answers one question he had, he supposes, and opens perhaps two dozen more.

"was all that ruckus out there you?" vex questions, teeth warmly bared in a slow smile. "were you setting off fireworks? i thought i'd forgotten a holiday."

percy can only stare. vex - _vex?_ \- rises from the chair, rubbing their wrists where the rope has worn them raw. he's certainly found her face, he thinks - but not her, no, with every movement and inflection he becomes slowly more certain that this is not her. besides the fact that it would've made very little sense for her to find her own separate way to addermire while she sent him off along the easiest path, there are differences, which gradually encroach on his perception as he watches. pushing past the initial confusion of association, he thinks this person's voice betrays their gender far more easily - this is a man, he dares to assume. vex's voice disembodied is elusive, made feminine by her disposition, her presentation. the duplicate lacks the care or inflection she layers on (lacks, interestingly enough, the posh element of her accent as well - where she has adopted the sharp, lofty rise and fall of emon's upper cusp, he remains rough and lower class). he cuts a more masculine figure as well, although - percy's sure, as he watches the copy sweep his long hair back over his shoulder - there is no greater weight to his jawline, no less softness around his eyes. he thinks of the lines he drew in his mind over her features, and superimposes them, and he sees no differences, no defects, no identifying flaws.

a twin, he thinks, and immediately the idea feels off somehow. he had twin siblings himself, whitney and oliver, one a boy and one a girl and aside from their shared age they were no more identical than any other set of two de rolo children. different sets present differently, he knows, but this is ridiculous. down to every pore they are the same.

color him fascinated, if a touch overwhelmed.

"you're the silent type, huh?" the copy is retrieving his things from a table at the back of the room. percy pulls himself out of his thoughts as he points at him with a lockpick. "suppose that's your right. won't ask what you're up to. i appreciate the hand." he fastens an odd silver belt around his waist.

"your sister sent me," percy hears himself say, and the man stops.

the belt is not quite buckled, and hangs oddly off his waist as his hands drop. "vex sent you after me?" he asks, and his voice is softer now. _yes,_ he thinks, _surely - siblings._

"not precisely," he returns, honestly.

the brother seems to regather himself, and finishes with his belt, and begins sliding knives into small sheaths sewn into his pants. "she's such a mother bear," he grumbles, almost to himself, almost as though he's forgotten anyone is there with him. "i would've gotten myself out, eventually. i don't recognize you."

"that's rather the point."

the man cracks a crooked smile. "guess so. alright. keep your secrets, i won't pry. how much did she promise we'd pay you?"

percy shakes his head. "you don't owe me any money."

he lifts a brow. "she haggled you that far down? don't think she's ever managed that before."

"no -" and he stammers, because the brother looks amused, impressed, utterly unfazed by his circumstances, and he's a bit perturbed to find that the sheer potency of confidence that runs between these two sets him a tad off guard. "we struck a - i mean, it was a mutually beneficial arrangement."

"she's got a knack for those."

"i needed a way to addermire," he rushes out. "i have - business here, of my own, my business - which i'd hoped i might employ your aid with, just for a moment. to square us up."

he expects a protest, but the brother crosses his arms and leans back and regards him, and smiles an open smile, as though enjoying some secret knowledge above percy's comprehension. "alright, friend," he says. "tit for tat. do you have a way out of here?"

"i do."

"you have a name?"

"i - do have one of those as well." more than one, to be entirely accurate.

the man laughs. "fair play. i'm vax."

_vex and vax?_   good lord. "that's horrendously confusing."

"blame our mother," he replies. "i'm vax'ildan, she's vex'ahlia, if that helps at all."

"it might, somewhat."

"everyone gets it wrong now and then." he gathers the last of his possessions from the table, a handful of beads, and pushes himself up to sit on the table as he goes to work braiding them into his hair. "you don't have to tell me your name," he declares, "but if you don't, i'm gonna call you chummy."

"chummy?"

he shrugs. "your pick."

"percy."

"percy," vax'ildan agrees, and grins, and flashes his teeth. like him they are sharp and shining. "alright, then, percy. lead the way."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> percy sure did do some murder in this one. 
> 
> i kept having the thought as i was writing this that some of you have played dishonored 2 through and some haven't, so some of you know who the dh canon crown killer is and some don't. which has gotta make for two very different experiences reading this bit. not sure which one would be more fun.
> 
> thank you so much to those of you who pop into the comments with new thoughts every time i update! yall keep me coming back.


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